phone calls<\/strong><\/p>\nthe math on phone calls works the same way as with meetings. the fewer, the better. phone calls also have some disadvantages compared to meetings.<\/p>\n
first and foremost, clients hate bills for phone calls. they\u2019ll agree that a half-hour meeting should be billable, but a half-hour phone call is just a \u201cquick question.\u201d that alone should make you hate phone calls.<\/p>\n
second, phone calls are usually unscheduled. all 7.5 billion people on planet earth can pick up the phone and interrupt your day at any time for any reason. a 15-minute unscheduled phone call really costs you about 30 minutes when you consider the loss of productivity switching tasks mentally. that one call costs you 1\/16 of your eight-hour day. four phone calls and a quarter of your day is gone. how many phone calls are worth that much in dead time?<\/p>\n
you can solve the unscheduled aspect of phone calls by requiring them to be scheduled. i started doing this. our admin staff can bunch them into selected time slots. this solves three problems. first, it removes the unscheduled interruptions. second, i can prepare in advance for the calls. finally, phone tag is eliminated.<\/p>\n
because of those vermin calling you about extending your car\u2019s warranty, no one answers the phone anymore. you have to leave a message. then they leave a message for you. you leave a message for them. you get it. this is an equation without a solution. you can easily lose 30 minutes playing tag for just one call. i returned from travel a few days ago and had six phone messages to return. i reached just one person.<\/p>\n
finally, exchanging information during phone calls is difficult. how many times have you tried directing a client to a page in a pdf copy of a tax return? that takes about five minutes alone. video calls with screen sharing are better. you can review tax returns on screen. but try getting your 70-year-old clients to do that. that\u2019s one more fine reason to freshen your client base with younger clients and schedule phone calls.<\/p>\n
you can discourage phone calls with your phone system auto attendant. i love calling people whose auto-attendant message drones on for two weeks. you know how these go.<\/p>\n
\u201cplease listen carefully as our options have changed. our address is\u2026 our telephone number is\u2026 our fax number is\u2026. our office hours are\u2026 our cat\u2019s name is\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
the options haven\u2019t changed in 10 years, and the cat has used up eight of nine lives by now.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026 please press 4,280 to reach joe schmo. please press zero to reach a disinterested human, who probably doesn\u2019t speak english.\u201d<\/p>\n
you press zero and get disconnected. this is a fine way to discourage calls.<\/p>\n
our admin staff answers phone calls live. they don\u2019t sit behind an auto attendant. you might fairly ask \u201cwhy\u201c after the above diatribe against phone calls. when prospective clients call, we are usually the first live voice they reach. they have left messages with three other firms. when fresh meat is on the line, someone in our firm can find time to speak with them.<\/p>\n
emails<\/strong><\/p>\ni know i have provided you with exactly zero solutions to the problems caused by meetings and phone calls. i will frustrate you a bit longer, while we discuss that cancer called email.<\/p>\n
here\u2019s my absolute favorite interchange during tax season.<\/p>\n
a client sends 20 messages spread out over a week, each with one tax document attached as a bitmap. what\u2019s the 21st<\/sup> message they send?<\/p>\n\u201cdid you get everything?\u201d<\/p>\n
how in the hell would i know that? a week later, i send a questions list and receive the following in response.<\/p>\n
\u201cdid you check the email messages i sent you for this? maybe you missed one?\u201d<\/p>\n
how many hours get devoured by this nonsense during tax season? if you are in a firm of 10 people, i\u2019ll bet 200+ hours disappear with this.<\/p>\n
at one point the ceo of slack predicted the end of business email in five years. i think he\u2019s wrong. business email is done in two years. the reason, quite simply, is malware.<\/p>\n
while email is every bit the time suck meetings and phone calls are, the real danger is malware, specifically ransomware.<\/p>\n
with the viruses of yesteryear, the objective was digital vandalism. bad guys wanted to destroy your data for fun. with ransomware, the bad guys hold your data hostage for money. there\u2019s a profit motive and business model that makes investing some effort worthwhile for the bad guys.<\/p>\n
here is a real-life example of a situation that happened to me last tax season.<\/p>\n
i got an email from a prospective client asking to work with us. because this was not an obvious referral, i scheduled a phone call to discuss working with them. we had the phone call, and i gave them a list of documents to send \u2013 prior year income tax returns. you know the drill.<\/p>\n
a couple of days later i got an email with what looked, by the file name, to be payroll tax information. because i had not asked for this, i smelled a rat. the file was an exe file, an almost certain sign of malware although some clients manage to send something like this when they try to compress files.<\/p>\n
first, i didn\u2019t know these people or where they came from. second, they sent me something suspicious. third, i couldn\u2019t find the firm on google. three strikes and you\u2019re out. i sent the file to our outsourced it firm for analysis.<\/p>\n
our it firm analyzed the file and determined it was ransomware. the exe file downloaded a ransomware program. we were a mouse click away from disaster.<\/p>\n
well, not actually for us. we use virtual workstations and none of our users have admin rights (even me). so the malware couldn\u2019t have installed anyway. but you get the idea. we saw this same scam happen at least three times.<\/p>\n
what\u2019s scary about this, as opposed to ordinary viruses, is that the bad guys set up a boiler room and incurred costs. that means there\u2019s a calculable return on investment for the bad guys. they\u2019re willing to invest money in infrastructure. no more nigerian general.<\/p>\n
during tax season, we received a dozen infected messages per day that got through our first line of spam defense. that\u2019s scary. that\u2019s over 1,000 bad messages during tax season. our staff must resist the urge to click on something bad 1,000+ times.<\/p>\n
the first defense to this is training. we have done a few lunch and learn malware seminars presented by our outsourced it firm. the second defense is eliminating email as a way to receive files.<\/p>\n
the solution<\/strong><\/p>\nhopefully, i have convinced you to fear meetings and phone calls and emails, oh my! now for the solution.<\/p>\n
you need practice management software that helps eliminate or greatly reduce meetings and phone calls and emails, oh my! here\u2019s the functionality you need.<\/p>\n
first,<\/strong> practice management software must include a portal. you can be certain who is sending you files when your clients have to log in to post files.<\/p>\nyou can avoid tax season meetings if clients have a place to post their tax return documents. in our firm, more than 70 percent of our clients posted their tax documents to our practice management software.<\/p>\n
your admin staff can deliver tax returns electronically. producing electronic tax returns is far faster than printing and collating paper copies. also, your admin staff won\u2019t be tied up with clients walking in to pick up tax returns. you won\u2019t be tied up when clients \u201cjust want to pop in and say hi.\u201d<\/p>\n
second,<\/strong> your software must automate as many routine communications as possible. for instance, picking up the phone to remind clients to send requested information is just silly in the 21st<\/sup> century. so is sending individual reminder emails. both of these activities add needless cost to wip and thus drive down turnaround time. a standalone portal won\u2019t do the job.<\/p>\nfinally,<\/strong> you need software that allows clients to post notes for you. this eliminates the need for email. no more racking your brain to find keywords to search your outlook data for a message sent a month ago. a good system organizes messages for you.<\/p>\nif your practice management software helps you manage tax return and other projects, that\u2019s an important bonus. if it includes review notes for preparers, checklists and staff collaboration tools, you have a winner. this is how tax seasons are won.<\/p>\n
how will you ever get your clients to use such software? do they use amazon? do they use facebook? do they use e-banking? don\u2019t worry, your clients are ahead of you. we started using our software a decade ago. more than 90 percent of our clients used it the first year.<\/p>\n
i don\u2019t want clients who tell me, \u201ci\u2019m not good with computers. i like telephone calls.\u201d you can have them and the needless increase in wip they cause. you can\u2019t argue with the math on wip and turnaround time.<\/p>\n
send out a few unapologetic e-blasts to your clients explaining the change and why the change is necessary. your attitude in the e-blasts is critical. most of your clients will be thinking, \u201cit\u2019s about time.\u201d replace the gripers with younger, more affluent clients.<\/p>\n
hopefully, you are drinking the kool-aid on reducing meetings and phone calls and emails, oh my! i\u2019ll end this post with quite possibly the stupidest practice management maneuver i have ever done. this is saying something as i have pulled some world-class stupid stunts.<\/p>\n
until a few years ago, we prescheduled tax season meetings. our theory was that we needed to preschedule, because we had too many clients to just let clients call in to schedule tax meetings. there were a few weaknesses in this theory:<\/p>\n
\nwe don\u2019t want the meetings.<\/li>\n clients don\u2019t want the meetings.<\/li>\n clients tie up admin staff rescheduling prescheduled meetings.<\/li>\n the meetings are largely useless.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\ni have already explained 1 and 4. i got a full understanding of 2 when meeting with the vice president of a software company. he had been a great personal tax client for about a decade. he drove every year from alexandria, va., to our office in chantilly, va. that\u2019s about 25 miles as the crow flies, but unless you grow wings, you have to use the capital beltway. this trip can last anywhere from 40 minutes to \u2013 well, noah spent less time in the ark.<\/p>\n
during one of our meetings about five years ago, he said, \u201cfrank, with this portal thing you have, do i really have to come out here to meet? i could just post all of my documents there.\u201d<\/p>\n
this hit me squarely between the eyes. he came to the meetings because we told him to come to the meetings. he didn\u2019t want a meeting. i didn\u2019t want a meeting. why were we having a meeting?<\/p>\n
he thought the meeting was part of our workflow process, and as a smart guy, didn\u2019t want to mess with our process.<\/p>\n
we had been using our clarity practice management software for five years already, and a lot of clients figured out that they could avoid viewing my ugly face by posting files there. but we had never explicitly told our clients they could just post their tax documents and skip the meetings. we had people posting the files and then coming in for meetings. why? again, we told them to come in.<\/p>\n
does it get any more stupid than this?<\/p>\n
the first year we stopped prescheduling meetings, we feared that clients would all call to schedule meetings the third week in march. we thought admin would be swamped with calls.<\/p>\n
never happened.<\/p>\n
our phone volume went way down. with prescheduled meetings, people clogged our phones and tied up our admin staff rescheduling meetings.<\/p>\n
of course, this could all be specific to our firm. maybe people really don\u2019t want to gaze lovingly into my eyes basking in my obvious genius. but i doubt that. this happened with all of our staff. people don\u2019t want meetings any more than we do. they come to meetings because we tell them to.<\/p>\n
i don\u2019t miss the meetings. well, in some cases i do. we all have favorite clients we like to see. how about just having lunch with them after tax season? they\u2019ll usually buy. that\u2019s why they\u2019re my favorites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
yep, there’s an app for that!<\/strong> \nby frank stitely<\/em> \nthe relentless cpa<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1362,"featured_media":56466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1363,1908,3120,3002,2246,2306],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-management","category-pro-member-exclusive","category-special","category-busy-season","category-tech-and-fintech"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nhow we killed the tax season client meeting - 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n