This week we hosted our inaugural “Receipt Bank Presents” events in London and Sydney, kicking off with The Client-First Firm. On two sides of the world, we heard from a panel of expert cloud professionals and bookkeepers to discuss how they create a valuable experience for their clients.
Register your interest for Receipt Bank Presents: The Client-First Firm here.
Business moves fast, that’s why our approach to customer experience is always evolving and improving in line with our business in general. I don’t believe this will ever stop.
The needs of our clients can change and we need to be delivering a consistent experience across multiple environments and situations. This means that providing a great customer experience needs to be an intrinsic value for every team member, not just a 5-step process outlined on the wall.
We don’t have an industry niche. The services we want to deliver and our pricing that helps clients self-select. For example, our bookkeeping packages have a huge emphasis on monthly management reporting – clients that are looking for a tick and flick quarterly BAS lodgement provider are unlikely to see value in our monthly fees.
I think it’s important to focus on providing a service that plays to the strengths of your team (current and future).
In our interviews, both entry and exit, our team refer to the variety of clients we work with as a huge positive – there are specific accounting skills learnt in specific industries, so being able to provide a wide range of experience for the team is vital for the progression of our company.
Client experience is 100% a top-down exercise. If every team member isn’t on board, you can’t be consistent, which is a key element of a great client experience.
One boardroom session over pizza and a beer isn’t going to cut it. The key steps we found to work are:
The idea of ‘Delivery’ has a different meaning for most firms and clients. For our internal measurement (KPIs), ‘service delivered’ is based on monthly management reporting – and this always needs to be delivered between 7-14 days EOM.
Register your interest for Receipt Bank Presents: The Client-First Firm here.
I think technology is helping us achieve this – for example, Receipt Bank allows us to crunch through expense reconciliations faster, getting to the reporting tasks faster, and Spotlight Reporting (amongst others), can then help us generate custom-client reporting faster.
There is a danger of viewing an excellent experience only as all the bells and whistles that your marketing department think of – ‘the clients will love it if you send a card on their birthday’ – yes, they will… but they’ll love you more if you deliver on scope consistently and on-time.
I think this is 80% of what it means to build a top client experience, if not more.
Our fees are structured so that our team have sufficient time to deliver to on scope, excellently.
That’s because the way you make your clients feel has a tangible and profound impact on overall business performance. It’s easy to tell a client to improve their profitability, but what are some of the things you can do to improve your own?
We recommend focusing on the strategic drivers and key metrics that drive your business as opposed to improve business performance. Currently we measure our performance with a combination of % of service delivered and scheduling qualitative feedback. In FY18 we’re rolling out an Uber-like 5-star, 1 question rating system which will be sent on a monthly basis; optimised for a mobile use too.
It all starts with understanding your business, your clients and your team. Source the data you need; research your clients, survey, interview, whatever you need to do, and turn that into a plan you can communicate to your team. Involve the whole team in your plan, and make sure everyone knows how to execute, day after day.
To find out how to build a client experience that adds value for your firm and your clients, register your interest now for our next events here.