Five Questions to Ask Clients Today

Make checking a client’s pulse part of your everyday habit.

by Rick Telberg

Busy season may be hectic and the hours may be long, but if you’re not making time to get to know your clients better, then you’re missing an opportunity that may not come again for another year. By then, a competitor may have beaten you to the punch.

Many accountants, auditors and tax professionals don’t realize how much busy season is, in fact, “opportunity season.” You have your clients’ undivided attention. They should have yours.

Beyond the routine tax preparation and tax planning, beyond the reconciliations and check marking, you need to be using client face-time to explore their greater needs and goals and your firm’s performance and opportunities.

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It’s not hard once you know where to start, according to Scott H. Cytron, a 20-year veteran of marketing and communications in the accounting profession.

Cytron

“Your clients may seem happy,” Cytron warns, “but how much do you really know about their satisfaction with your firm and services? Have you asked them?” Mostly, accountants don’t ask, and certainly not in a systematic way. I call it “Don’t ask, don’t know.”

The reason? “Mainly,” Cytron says, “accountants just don’t really know how to ask the question. They’re afraid they’ll hear bad news. And then what would they do? But, honestly, is that any way to run a business? There should be no surprises.”

Take the opportunity to do more than just ask “How are we doing?” Ask how the client is doing. Find out what the client wants from their life and business. See if there are ways you can help, professionally or just as a friend.

Cytron suggests five questions to get started:

They key is to make checking a client’s pulse part of your everyday habit. When you ask “Hi. How are you?” you should mean it. And be prepared to ask for more.

On another level, the firm should be checking client-satisfaction levels at least annually through methodical surveys. Cytron says the surveying doesn’t always need to be completely scientific, and, in fact, rarely is. “But you can get a pretty good idea of where you stand with a just a few responses,” he says. ”And then you’ll know what you need to do next.” Which could range from damage control on a particular client relationship to more in-depth research.

But accountants need to break the habit of answering e-mail with e-mail, text with text, voicemail with voicemail. Every client query is an opportunity for an old-fashioned conversation. Try the phone. Get lunch.

Who knows what could happen?

Copyright 2010 AICPA
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Posted at February 8, 2010
Filed Under BSG [CPA TRENDLINES] | 2 Comments

Comments

2 Responses to “Five Questions to Ask Clients Today”

  1. Darren Wendroff on February 11th, 2010 10:58 am

    Great article, although feedback from clients is sometimes difficult to get. We’ve recently conducted a Net Promoter Score survey, but I like the questions you introduced. I might incorporate some of those in our next NPS Survey. Good stuff …

  2. Ed Wielage on April 29th, 2010 2:37 pm

    There is an excellent book titled “The Trusted Advisor”. One of the points the book makes is that before a client will seek your advice on business decisions they have to perceive you as someone whose judgment they trust. If all the accountant has ever done is provide compliance services, they probably haven’t earned that level of trust. To earn that trust, the accountant needs to first demonstrate that they have more to offer. That requires that the accountant has to take the first step by providing more than tax returns and financial statements. In my opinion, too many CPAs are reluctant to provide an extra level of service unless they get compensated for it. So the CPA continues perceived as a “bean counter” and never becomes the trusted advisor.

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