drop the devices and go talk with clients.
by alan anderson, cpa
transforming audit for the future
most firms have guidelines for turnaround time and response times but stop there when it comes to delivering excellent customer service. does your firm have a definition of what superior client service might mean in an audit?
more: deliver more audit value by getting out of the conference room | know your three audit w’s | planning lays the foundation of audit relevance | are you correctly identifying the relevance intersection? | traditional audits don’t deserve premium billing | turning audit & accounting into assurance & advisory | stop sending the wrong message to audit teams
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remember that relevance is the intersection of what your client wants, what you think is important and what the stakeholders need. providing superior client service is definitely contained within that intersection.
how often have you been willing to pay more for a service when you get excellent customer service? how often have you terminated a service because of terrible customer service? i bet more than a few times for both. high-quality client service is essential to client satisfaction and retention. great client service doesn’t typically win the client, but it does work to keep the client.
the client will view an audit delivered without superior client service as a commodity. so, let’s talk about what that means in the audit world. virtually every size accounting firm has marketing materials promoting their excellent client service and high-quality audit and tax services. most firms say the same thing, but very few actually set standards and goals for what that means.
that’s why i recommend to the firms i work with that they establish firmwide and client-specific standards for providing client service. some firms assign a specific person or a department to ensure client service, but this is missing the boat. client service is not a department. it’s everyone’s job. client service is a mindset and an attitude, and it doesn’t cost the firm anything beyond the time it takes to discuss what superior client service entails. but the paybacks can be substantial when the client retains your firm instead of moving on to a firm that promises the same “superior client service,” but for a lower fee.
client service isn’t just the big things like delivering the audit report timely and with minimal hassle to the client, but it’s also in small, easily overlooked details like making sure the client’s name is spelled correctly and that the correct date is on everything. it also means that when your team is in the field, they’re not taking personal phone calls or texting incessantly. it should go without saying that when your team is in the field, they are courteous and smile, they’re on time, and they have a positive attitude. they act and dress professionally, and they’re respectful of the client’s time and resources. they also safeguard sensitive client documents to keep them confidential.
when i started as an auditor, time was not much of an object. for at least the first five years of my career, i can’t remember an engagement where our fees weren’t based on time spent. the unlimited time didn’t promote tremendous efficiency, but we did spend more time talking to our clients. back then, all of us – staff, partners and clients – had been raised in a culture of talking to others and conversing with each other on long road trips. but that’s not the case today. talking is not normally the number one choice of communication by the younger staff. they’d rather im them, text them or use the latest communications app. that unlimited time also meant we had the time to understand our clients and their industries. we weren’t rushing from one job to the next. by talking to our clients and walking around their workplaces, we learned how their businesses operated and what they were trying to accomplish.
because we weren’t operating under fee realization pressure, we had the time to really understand our clients. we became really good at asking the next best question and became better listeners. verbal communication was the most important form of gathering information during an audit. we would take the time to ask our clients about their businesses and their concerns. remember, controllers and cfos typically don’t have many other people at their companies who understand the financial aspects of running a business, so they are likely to appreciate conversing with a like-minded person.
while a significant amount of verbal communication has been supplanted by e-mail communication, verbal communication is crucial when topics need to be discussed to arrive at a solution or a common understanding. unfortunately, today’s generation has forgotten – or maybe never learned – the verbal communication skills. email has become the de facto mode of communication. but email lacks the give and take of a conversation, which is crucial when complex topics are involved. a face-to-face conversation is much more effective in arriving at a solution or common understanding.
this means we as leaders need to help our people develop that skill.