4 ways to improve your client relationships

July 21, 2021 10:52 AM

To be a successful accountant, you must ensure your current clients are satisfied with your services. Not only should you do everything you can to boost your clients’ financial health, but also you should continually think of new ways to further improve your relationships with them. This will help you retain their business, and they may even refer your bookkeeping services to others in their network.

Whether you work with small business owners, numerous people in the workforce, or a major corporation, every one of your clients wants to work with an accountant they can trust and rely on. Thus, you should always strive to go above and beyond with your services so that they are always satisfied. Here are just a few ways that you can improve your relationships with your accounting clients.

Anticipate your clients’ needs

You are proactive in your marketing and documenting financial data, so why not be even more proactive in predicting what your clients need? Companies that really wow their clients are those that anticipate what their clients may need from them and take action. You may foresee them needing advice on building their monthly budget or tips on cutting costs. Before they even voice their requests, provide necessary advice via a phone call, email, video call or an easy-to-follow PowerPoint presentation.

Also, if you are not quite sure what your clients are looking to change financially, be proactive and ask them. Taking this initiative will tell you how you can serve them better than you already do — just make sure to follow through! This will also show them you really care about helping them improve their financial health. They will see your effort and reward you with more business and/or loyalty to your firm.

Provide reports with helpful guidance

Your clients may be looking for useful advice and direction. Another way to improve your relationships with them is by giving them regular reports that include an action item list to guide them on how to solve any potential issues early on. When you are proactive and provide an action item list for them, they'll really feel like you care about their financial health and want them to succeed. You can share a customized guide on ways they can increase their monthly profits, get organized for tax season, and more.

Respond to inquiries faster

No one likes when businesses don’t reply to their emails or calls. Your clients may feel the same way when you don’t get back to their calls or emails for two to three business days! If it always takes at least a few days to get back to their inquiries, it could be killing your customer service reputation. In today's world, clients need (and expect) almost instant communication. Thus, you should try to change your business operations or daily schedule so you always make time to respond to emails or call your clients back.

Yes, it may sometimes be difficult to instantly reply to an email or return a call. Urgent projects or crises may arise that demand your full attention. However, you should provide the right expectations, i.e., a 24-hour response time or something along those lines, so your team and your clients understand what the expectation is and how quickly your team needs to address client communication. One simple way to do this is by having an automatic email reply to all incoming emails that says something like, “Please expect a response within one business day.” This will help ensure you don’t leave your clients wondering when they might hear back from you.

Implement new services

Consumers love when companies launch exciting new products and services. Thus, don’t shy away from offering new services that your existing clients would really appreciate. For example, if you file your clients’ taxes each year, start offering annual audits to ensure their accounting books are in compliance. This would really help them in the event they are ever audited by the IRS. Also, if you haven’t yet done so, you can take your Certified Management Accountant exam so you can be certified to help business managers with their bookkeeping needs.

Your current clients may not even know yet what services they really need until you bring the possibilities in front of them. Therefore, once you start offering the new service, send out an email update to your current client list to help them be aware of it. You can even offer them a VIC (Very Important Client) discount for the first time they use the service, which may pique their interest in trying it out. In addition, make sure to highlight this new service on your website and promote it on your social media channels.

To continually grow your bookkeeping business, you must make sure your current clients are happy with the services you provide. You should also consider how you could improve your relationships with your clients so they continue to look to you for all of their accounting needs. To do this, you need to anticipate your clients’ needs and provide regular reports that contain guidance. On top of this, respond to your clients’ inquiries faster and implement new services they would love. This will help you improve your client relationships and ensure your business flourishes in the long run.