OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

Client Satisfaction: Make It ‘Priceless’

Price, service, quality. Can we settle for two out of three?

by Rick Telberg
At Large

In our relentless pursuit of mutually satisfying accountant-client relationships, we’ve asked more than 2,000 finance and accounting professionals what it is that clients really want. The responses indicate a general, if not unanimous, consensus: clients want service. Lots of it. Now. And it better be good. … and cheap.

“They want someone who will take a personal interest in learning their business and help guide/coach them through the turbulent times,” said David Niedhart, head of a small CPA firm in Houston, Texas. “Be proactive and help them save money on taxes and other costs of operation.”

Niedhart crammed a lot of common feelings into that response. We found clients and CPAs alike calling for much the same: CPAs who care, who do more than audit or prepare taxes, who are proactively involved in keeping clients updated and duly informed, all at a price that clients tend to call “reasonable” and CPAs tend to call “cheap.”

Edward Greenlee, president of a small firm under his name in Ruidoso, N.M., had a hard time coming to his conclusion about what clients want. “Most want cheap fees and even cheaper software to clean up the messes they created,” he told us. “A few value your efforts and want more from you.”
Indeed, “cheap” came up quite a bit. The all-too-human urge that creates a demand for cheap beer, cheap cars and cheap clothes extends to audits and accounting services.

Steven M. Vakula, CPA, owner of a small firm in Phoenix, Ariz., has apparently been dealing with clients who are even more demanding. They want “cheap service of the highest quality available.”

Is that asking too much? Well, maybe …

“Price, service, quality — pick two!” said one CPA.

But Jeffrey H. Golbois, a partner with Pastor & Golbois, CPAs, in Boca Raton, Fla., sees clients having more reasonable requests.

“Clients want accountants/CPAs who are knowledgeable and respond to their questions in a timely fashion,” he said, “while not being charged for every little item.”

But something else came up a lot, something we’d think was both reasonable and cheap, not to mention easy, but has apparently been widely lacking: communication.

“They want someone who will take their phone call, who will listen to them on the phone and will make time for them,” said Margaret O’Donnell, president of Topstone Financial Consultants, a small firm in Redding, Conn. “They want to be understood.”

John Bower, on the senior staff of a small governmental agency in Indianapolis, Ind., sees a need for “CYA” CPA services. He says clients want “not to have to worry about service being provided. They want to know that it is done and there is nothing that will come back to haunt them.”

The idea of “avoiding trouble” came up in quite a few responses, but overall, clients were looking for real help in running their businesses. One anonymous comment from a client at the CEO level seemed to say it all:

“Clients want guidance. They don’t need their CPA to be a guru in their business, but they expect their CPA to take an active interest in their business. Being willing to listen and learn the business is important. Clients want sound advice when it’s given, and they want to know what the numbers mean. They want accuracy and the confidence in knowing what they hire their CPA for will be done right.”

That says a lot, maybe even most, of what any decent CPA needs to know. You could see it as a list of what a client might expect from a CPA. Notice that price isn’t mentioned. Apparently some things are priceless. Solid CPA service is one of them.

[First published by the AICPA]