Hey, it’s Tailor - Happy Friday!!

Here’s newsletter #3 this week which is part 2 of the client experience conversation.

Table of Contents

• Becoming the Stickiest Firm

• Email Assistant for Accounting Firms

• Question for you:

• Lastly…

Becoming the Stickiest Firm

Okay, so last we discussed how to make onboarding special and how it sets the tone for the ongoing engagement.

It’s time to focus on the meat and potatoes of the client relationship, the ongoing relationship. This is phase two of the three life stages of a client engagement.

When I say “sticky,” I mean you’re the kind of firm that clients never peel away from. You stick around for a long time.

Accounting has such a reputation for being boring, transactional, and dry. Let's shed that skin and focus on being a more modern firm. Modern firm’s don’t get held back by stuff like that.

Focusing on areas like relationships, trust, and solid communication in addition to solid, consistent transactional work is the key.

Let’s make you even stickier with your clients!

Lead with Relationships for Retention

Good work keeps clients around in the short term but good relationships make them never want to leave. And that’s the goal, right?

Clients don’t care about bank rec’s or how you didn’t depreciate land again this month(wow!), they think about the feeling of your last client meeting or communication.

Here’s a few ways to make that feeling a good one:

• Speak their language. No acronyms or accounting jargon.

• Be consistent with communication. Stop rescheduling all their meetings & waiting a week to reply.

• Be a partner to them. Be there when they need you (within reason).

To me, this is the first step in building a long term client relationship with lots of lifetime value to your firm.

Okay, so relationships are important but what are the other things that we should be focusing on with client engagements.

The Framework

There are four major areas of focus with every single client engagement. If I’m not hitting all four, I start stressing about our quality. These are specific to us, but honestly I think all apply to everyone.

1. Expectations

Unsurprisingly, this is the most important piece in an engagement. It doesn’t matter how well you do the work if it’s not the work that they’re expecting. If they want monthly financials but you’re sending them quarterly, we have a problem right?

This is where onboarding really flows into the ongoing engagement. If there’s a handoff between teams, make sure expectations are clearly passed along.

(AI notetaker notes + email context organized could be really great for this)

2. Trust

When I onboard new clients, I get to trusted partner status ASAP. The faster they trust you, the more they like you, the better you can build that ongoing relationship with them. Managing the work for clients, is about keeping trust levels above a certain line. Fewer mistakes, better communication, and consistency all lead to build a solid buffer of trust with clients.

If a client loses trust, it’s only a matter of time until they find a replacement they can have better trust feelings about.

3. Consistency (The Work)

All the other points here are meaningless without doing proper, consistent, and trustworthy work on a regular basis.

By the way, having a great relationship with a client makes your mistakes a lot more forgivable. They trust you to deal with them but just don’t make it a habit…

4. Continuous Improvement

This is one of the biggest differentiators for my firm in my opinion and why we’re so sticky. We not only do the work, but we’re constantly looking for ways to make the processes better, more accurate, or more efficient for our clients.

See an opportunity for multi-entity credit cards? I recommend something like Ramp.

If you’re constantly upgrading your processes to align better with the clients needs, you’re so much less replaceable than a firm that’s just “doing the work”. My mentality is focused on the long term with client engagements. “How can I keep this client indefinitely” and that’s where this really comes into play.

If you focus on these four areas, I would be genuinely amazed if you had any significant churn. What else could your clients be looking for in a financial partner?

Ways that I found help make the ongoing work a little more personal

• Loom videos along with financial packet. If you’re not having calls with clients, this is a huge upgrade for most clients.

• Quick response rates - We respond within 48 hours to pretty much all emails from clients. Even something like “We can get to this next week” is better than radio silence.

• Idea Sessions - I love coming up with ideas together with clients. I think it really builds up the “partnering with you” vibe too.

• Personal Touch - To reiterate what I wrote in the past newsletter about remembering birthdays, kids name’s, etc because that’s such an easy way to build relationships and stand out with clients.

At the end of the day, great work matters, but it’s really the relationships and small touches that keep clients around for the long haul.

These are the things that have worked for me, but every firm has its own style. I’m always curious how others approach it.

If you’ve found little ways to make your client relationships stronger, I’d love to hear them.

P.S. Are you asking for feedback regularly? If not, you should be. I use this form for feedback after 6ish months and it’s been eye opening and great for testimonials.

Email Assistant for Accounting Firms

My friend Mike created this AI specific bot trained on his & his team’s email conversations to help align conversations with clients. I think this is so smart for a couple of reasons:

1. It reduces questions about how to respond to clients in specific scenarios. If Mike is going to respond, this is how he would do it.

2. It aligns the conversation style of his firm, so clients are getting more consistent communication among different team members.

Anyways, I thought this was a really cool idea and wanted to share.

Have you built any cool AI processes at your firm yet? Hopefully this will help get the juices flowing.

Question for you:

What’s one small thing you could start doing that would make clients never want to leave?

Lastly…

My dog popping in on the background of virtual calls helps humanize us with our clients. He’s also the reason this newsletter is a few hours later today….

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend! See you in 2 weeks.

Tailor

P.S. We’re going to give away dad hats for those who refer 3+ people who subscribe to the newsletter. Use the share link below: