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Practice Excellence Survey: Early findings

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25th Jul 2013
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The results are in from more than 3,700 clients taking part in the 2013 Practice Excellence Survey and are already being shared with participating firms.

Some 3,337 comments and testimonials were received from clients of 128 accountancy practices, making the Practice Excellence Survey the most comprehensive client satisfaction study carried out within the profession. Taking part in the Practice Excellence Programme is free, but practices that pay an extra £249 will receive benchmarking reports including detailed sector analyses plus the comments and testimonials from their own clients.

The programme will culminate in the traditional Practice Excellence Awards, in which the leading 10 firms in the small, medium and large practice categories are invited to submit entries to a panel of expert judges. They will decide three nominees in each category, with the winners decided by the votes of AccountingWEB members. This three-stage process makes the awards a true 360-degree assessment.

The Practice Excellence Programme first started in 2011 and was dedicated from the outset to encouraging firms to focus on client satisfaction and sharing best practices between them to improve the wider profession. For the past three years AccountingWEB has assembled a treasure trove of feedback from clients and practitioners to establish the key things that make clients happy and firms successful.

The online survey had a new format for 2013. Run in conjunction with customer satisfaction experts Smith & Henderson and offered as a free basic service, the number of participating firms jumped 85% and the survey comments and responses more than doubled. The 2013 satisfaction scores in various categories have been collected on a more sensitive scale (1-10) and where possible, these have been linked back to adjusted ratings from previous years’ Practice Excellence surveys.

Practice Excellence Survey responses 2011-3As we can see in the charts right the bigger survey response was accompanied by a 4% fall in the key measure of clients’ willingness to recommend their accountant to friends and colleagues. Casting a wider net and increasing the range of responses means that a slight drop in the overall results is understandable. Rather than seeing the drop in key measures as cause for alarm, the global figure is encouraging. Confirmation or otherwise of the prevailing trends will emerge from comparisons of the results from firms that have participated in the programme for all three years.

Practice Excellence Survey satisfaction trends 2011-3Individual firms have already received their initial results. In the weeks to come, AccountingWEB will be going through the responses to get a clearer picture of trends within the profession and the Practice Excellence Awards judges will be scrutinising entries from the best performing firms.

Previous years have indicated a close link exists between client satisfaction and long-term success, and we identified understanding the client’s needs as having a strong correlation with their likelihood to recommend. There was also evidence last year that clients’ satisfaction levels were less influenced value for money ratings. We will put all of these theories to the test in the individual sector analyses carried out for the benchmarking reports and present the results in articles and Practice Excellence Programme webinars in the autumn.

The response from participating firms has been encouraging. Watford accounting firm Meades Contractors blogged this week about the positive feedback it had received. The firm achieved a 9.1 recommendation rating, which puts it exactly in line with the profession’s overall average in 2013. Meades significantly outperformed the small firm average ratings for communication and understanding clients’ business objectives, but also spotted some areas where it could increase clients’ awareness of its services.

On behalf of the firm, Paul Meades said the Practice Excellence Programme was “a great and innovative way to  better understand clients’ needs and find out how they feel about the service we offer”.

The information from the survey is often difficult to get hold of and most businesses would welcome such feedback, whether negative or positive. He was particularly pleased to have outperformed the small firm average for understanding clients’ needs, which “reassures us that we are servicing them correctly”, Meades said.

“As a business we regularly measure KPIs including turnaround times, client tax savings and team happiness. Having an external snapshot of our current performance (from our clients’ perspective) is particularly useful and has highlighted areas that need to be addressed.”

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