Do clients want a new kind of relationship with their accountant?
Is face-to-face still best for client interactions or has the dynamic shifted for good? Steve Cox explores how the client-accountant relationship will evolve in a post-Covid world.
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Meeting client still best at all points of the relationship
You got it right when you pointed our body language
Even on the telephone people tend to speak more quickly than they would face to face
A telephone does not adequately give visible sympathy
Pure email is worse
Each comment becomes an extra message
Thanks for these very interesting questions!
One aspect grabs me: you say " Traditionally, the accountant needs to own the client process ..." To me this attitude needs to be totally abandoned. Sure, as the accountant I have certain needs regarding statements I must make, info I must collect, responsibilities I must fulfill, and often a need to do certain steps in a very specific order.
At the same time, I always take the attitude that I must collaborate with the client around my needs and - most crucially - around theirs AS WELL. So that how the interacting actually proceeds is a result of this collaborating.
I would frame the situation, then, as the accountant needs to own their technical and professional needs but the whole process with the client is a relationship which both parties own and create together from their mutual needs.
Of course I as the accountant also have my personal needs alongside my professional-technical needs, e.g. some clients speak too quickly for me, so I need to ask them to slow down or repeat themselves.
Easy stuff fine online.
Complex stuff far better face to face.
But ultimately whatever the client prefers is what we do.