CPA Trendlines

Listen, learn and anticipate client needs.

How? Join the study. Get the answers.

by Rick Telberg
At Large

Not to sound too much like your mother or anything, but couldn’t you do a little better job at your job? Couldn’t you do a little more to satisfy your clients?

We think that’s a good question. So we’ve been asking and we’ve been looking for what CPAs have to say about keeping clients satisfied.

We got some excellent insight from Kevin Gaudette, a sole proprietor in Vineyard Haven, Mass.

“Clients want to hear from their CPA from time to time during the year,” he said. “Some clients want regular monthly meetings with their CPA just to let them know what’s going on with their business so that potential problems or opportunities can be dealt with currently instead of waiting until the end of the year. Don’t be afraid to bring new products and ideas to your client’s attention. They don’t look at that as trying to sell them something. My experience shows that they see it as ‘looking out for them’.”

An anonymous partner at a smallish local firm expressed a similar thought: “CPA firms should have a mentality, similar to a bank, in which an individual within the firm acts as a client relationship manager. This individual, within a small firm, would be the partner.”

Nice idea! There is, after all, a big human side to public accountancy. It is the side that thrives on communication, sympathy, assistance, mutual objectives and, of course, low, low fees.

We heard a lot about fees.

Chris Vowels, a mid-level staffer at Holland CPAs in Bowling Green, Ky., suggested “contacting clients more than once a year at tax time. Show clients the value they are receiving for our ‘exhorbitant’ fees.” Note that Vowels wasn’t suggesting cut-rate fees, only value for price.

Michael Augustine, a sole proprietor in Virginia Beach, Va., had similar advice: “CPAs should make themselves and their services indispensable to clients and constantly prove, with superb service, how valuable CPAs are to their clients’ success.”

Or, as Michael Weitfle at Damon Tax Service put it, give clients “customized services, not the one-size-fits-all, take-it-or-leave-it cop-out.”

They’re all talking about service that’s both superb and customized. Consider the recommendation of a certain anonymous senior staffer who apparently dabbles in psychology: “Listen for complaints from anybody within the client’s organization. A complaint is an indication that an area of the client’s organization may be in need of improvement. Resist the urge to empathize with the individual. Instead, try to identify ways to respond to the complaint.”

Somebody else went a step farther, suggesting that CPAs “listen more to what clients say and for what they do not say.”

Now that’s listening. Another senior staffer explained how to do it: “Learn to read the nonverbal signs of dissatisfaction.”

Jason Horton, a sole proprietor in Childress, Texas, suggested looking at something even harder to read. “Look into the client’s future,” he said, “and try to predict trends that might affect them.”

They taught you all that in college, right? Socio-Psycho-Futurological Communication 101. If you didn’t get an A in that course, then you’d better start reviewing your notes. Satisfying clients isn’t as easy as auditing or tax preparation. It takes a certain something else.

[First published by the AICPA]

Posted June 24, 2007