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Great points Richard.
I think on the whole accountancy practices focus too much on transactional connections (e.g. you phone me up to discuss my accounts) that they end up neglecting relational transactions (e.g. customer service touches that aren't necessarily related to the work I'm doing).
This can have a massive impact of client retention - especially in an industry with increasing competition.
I recently wrote an article on Linkedin about this exact topic with some tips/ideas on what accountancy practices can do differently.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/seriously-low-hanging-fruit-rudi-jansen-t...
Face to face communications are time wasting, inefficient and clumsy. Both the client and accountant, generally, do not provide considered points.
Thankfully, we are now living an advanced technological age where it is possible to not to have time wasting meeting.
As mention in the thread you provided a link to, accountants are not friends of their clients. I try and make sure that accountant client relationship is not blurred. Once that line is crossed, some clients think you are always available for them, of course without additional fees.
I am available if I am paid for my time outside my engagement. Clients, believe me, do not/will not pay.
Further, I do not have any intentions to create a community. I want to do the work efficiently and be professional. If clients want hand holding on basic of business, then I am not the right accountant for them.
I think it is down to practice owner's personality. I do not have patience for time wasting meetings and chit chat. I do not want to know about my clients holidays and social life.
Isn't it down to the preferred communication style for our client?
Why when any other industry innovates and uses technology is that seen as a positive but within our industry it seems always to be an issue.
When you go to the supermarket people have the chance to use the self-checkouts or personal interaction with a cashier.
Apps to book taxis (uber) are now huge but I'm sure people still choose to call their local taxi firm too.
Amazon, Apple, Google and many other firms are seen as thought leaders and all have little or no human interaction.
In my opinion accountants (& other professionals) need to utilise technology to enable their customers to interact with them how they choose.
We've built our business on providing relationship based advice to our clients but we can & do still do that with technology.
Technology (in my opinion) is a huge enabler not a deterrent and definitely not a backward step if used for the benefit of the service to your clients.
I'm my humble opinion you can't do the job right without interaction. You have to get to know your client's lifestyle etc. otherwise you cannot advise properly.
If business just want number crunchers then that's where they will go.
Your article (if true over all Accountants) just shows that people coming into the profession haven't got a clue what being an Accountant is all about. It's a pity the survey didn't gauge the age of the Accountants who took part. Better still a survey of what age groups think would have produced a far more meaningful result.
Hello John
Like many accountants, I have not met at least half of my clients, since they live well outside my local area.
The sign up process was through exchange of emails and a telephone conversation. Thankfully, increasing number of clients are going this way.
There are many other ways of knowing clients aside of time wasting and environmentally damaging face to face meetings.
There is a shift away now from face to face meetings since clients value their time and like us, they have so many other pressures.
I think you may have a point where there are complex tax issues, meetings would be effective. We do not take on clients with complex tax issues since that is outside my skills set.
I am an oldie John, well middle aged.
If that's how you run your business, FirstTab, then fine. You appear to have lost that ability to connect with your clients, acting more as an agent rather than an Accountant.
Of course phone calls and meetings can be an apparent waste of time. Is spending time with your loved ones (but really wanting to get on the golf course) a waste of time? I fully understand that what is important to some may not be important to others, but ours is a profession that needs to keep sight of the personal touch. Accountancy is unlike any other profession and there is something about the feeling of helping and watching your clients grow and become successful.
How do I hold face to face meetings when they are miles away?
Thanks to the net, We have moved on from the days when our clients were local.
Through technology it is possible to keep in touch with clients without seeing their faces in my office.
Yep, I think you've made the point, FirstTab.
You've said it all. You are offering a number crunching service and acting as agent to those (I'm not having a pop, merely making observations).
I did not meant to make my point by posting the same comment 3 times. It was early morning.
Great points Richard.
I'm personally a HUGE fan of fully systemising your practice, using the right technology and therefore (if done correctly), automating as much as possible.
However, most practices fail to get this step right and while they 'think' they have a systemised practice, they haven't, and it has many cracks in it. And this prevents them from taking the most important step.
IF they did this properly, what that allows the practice to do, is to take the next step (which is the whole point of systemising in the first place) and that's where they focus on the EXPERIENCE they give to their clients.
Done properly, it should allow them to DEEPEN their relationships, by freeing them up from low level activities so they can spend quality time with their clients where they can MAXIMISE the value they provide them, whether that's face-to-face or online.
When accountants get this wrong, it distances them from their clients as you say, making them REPLACEABLE.
When they get it right, it deepens and strengthens the relationship with their clients, making them an integral part of their client's finance function and therefore making them IRREPLACEABLE.
Nice sales pitch James. Accountants have always changed the way they work when there is a need. When calculators (mechanical) came in a lot of people said "that's it we will lose our brains to these adding machines". Did we? No, of course not.
Don't forget, James, it's those low-level activities that sometimes give the Accountant an insight as to what makes the client tick. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
I'm not selling anything John, just sharing the love.
What I mean by low level tasks is chasing clients to reconcile their bank accounts or to submit their expenses.
We can use Receipt Bank for expenses and automation and admin staff to chase clients to get done what we need them to do.
We can use automated proposal tools to produce detailed proposals in seconds and get legally signed off.
We can use videos to send instructions for how to perform certain tasks.
All of these I would consider low-level activities.
High-level for me would be forecasting, tax planning, interpretation of monthly management accounts and really getting to the heart of their business and helping them to grow and move into the future with confidence.
This is where the REAL value comes in.
Your high level is what should come naturally to Accountants. That is the REAL VALUE of being an Accountant.
@Firsttab are all of your clients really too far away to meet.
I have remote clients who I deal with via skype etc but realistically about 80% of my clients are within 20 minutes of my office I am located in the middle of 3 cities Newcastle, Durham and Sunderland.
Do you really service clients country wide or are 80% of them London based so you could see them if you had the need.
As I said on the original post I think if you don't ever meet your cleint's it will put a cap on the size of clients you will get. I suspect you keep your fees so tight to win work that there is no room for a meeting, even the smallest job should have enough in it for a 30 minute meeting if needed.
For me we are in the relationship business and its important that you get to know you clients well in order for them to remain sticky to you. The larger on line firms succeed by the volume of work they do and I would think it is difficult for a sole trader to replicate that.
I would feel a bit like a hamster on a wheel just sitting banging out high volume low fee compliance work. For me the variety is what makes my job interesting.
I have an old guy as a tax only client who is a retired musician who likes to meet to meet face to face to discuss his annual tax return. It could be dealt with remotely but he gets comfort from having someone talk him through it. Its not a massive fee but I accommodate him, thats when I noticed a picture of him and Frank Sinatra on his study wall. This guy has lived and had an interesting life.
If I didnt have time to do the odd meeting like that I would have to question what I was in the game for.
Agreed.
Glennzy's way is NOT my way.
I do not want to go on justifying the way I work. I don't need to.
Best to move on.
@FT I am not having a go at you its just you post is a bit of a contradiction to the original one this thread is based on.
Then you said you wouldn't meet clients as they would not pay for your time or your fees were too low to have client meetings. Now you are saying they live to far to come and see you which is it?
All people are saying is that each client is different and adopting a struct no meeting policy would stop you getting some clients who require that.
I have a lot of contractor like clients i hardly ever hear from but I am here if need be.
Can I ask you what your client burn rate is?
If its more than 10/15% per year your system has flaws in it.
Offering a no frills service means you are always exposed to someone doing it cheaper and the personal touch is all that makes the difference.
I have no regrets how I work, well too few to mention.
The majority of my clients expect a face to face meeting.
I totally agree that it's not essential, but as others have suggested - it makes the client far less likely to leave if you have a good relationship with them.
Things also often crop up in meetings that give you a better picture of the clients life, which can in turn lead to ways of tax planning or structuring the clients affairs etc.
I guess that's the difference between how various accountants work though. I would just consider what I do as a standard accounts service, but I wouldn't dream of just rattling off a set of accounts without then trying to help the client save tax etc.