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More on How to Keep Your Clients Delighted Practitioners Share Their Next Big Idea By: Intuit Product: N/A Tip Category: Practice Development

Situation

Accountants, Bookkeepers, QuickBooks consultants, tax preparers and other professionals are always looking for ways to keep clients happy. Happy clients are loyal clients.

Response

Recently Intuit surveyed readers of Intuit® ProConnection® to ask them for their secrets in keeping clients loyal and happy.

But we also asked them for the next big idea they would use to up the level of client satisfaction. Here are their plans for the future.

Expanding Services or Capability

• Becoming more of a "business coach."
• Greater use of the internet and online services.
• I have been conducting business using a remote access option for over 4 years now. However, I would like to begin offering on-line group training sessions or user group meetings.
• I will be adding staff who will be just as service oriented [as I am and] with as quick a response time as I have implemented over the years. The more of us...the merrier our current clients will be and the ones that we gain in the future.

Small Touches

• Generating an automatic birthday e-mail. I have birthdays and e-mail addresses from their client data, so why not acknowledge their "special day" with a quick Happy Birthday?

Free QuickBooks Help

• Our firm is thinking of offering our services for up to 4 hours free of charge for a client who is in desperate need of help with QuickBooks. We are hopeful that they will see the benefit of our help and that there information will be cleaner for tax time.
• Providing a free accounting software setup. Many of our clients have purchased Quicken and QuickBooks but really don't know how to set it up or use it to the full potential. If we go to those clients and set things up right and provide a little instruction, they are thrilled and the information we get at the end of the year makes our lives wayyy easier.

Other Billing Changes

• We may start billing for consulting using blocks of time - hopefully will keep the fear of the unknown (hourly rate), and will keep them calling so we can address issues up front, instead of fixing them later.

Adding Value for Clients

• With my top clients, provide a printout of the QuickBooks "Expert Analysis" information to help them run their business better - at no charge.
• Making sure [that clients] understand the benefits of new versions of QuickBooks to determine whether the latest version will benefit them.

Promoting Clients

As Part of Gift Effort

• We're going to expand on [an existing effort (the prize wheel, so when clients receive their finished tax return they can spin the wheel for various prizes)] and try to involve some of our small business clients to promote their businesses with promotional items on the wheel.

As Part of Outreach

• E-Mail newsletter with tips, news, training and reminders. Feature a client each month (with permission) providing a free marketing opportunity.
• We are creating an in house newsletter featuring one client and their success story each time.

Staying in Touch

• I'm thinking about calling clients every 6 months or so just to check in to see how they are doing and give them an opportunity to ask any question that comes up.

Unique Business Card

• I would like to try handing out the business card size CD that has lots of info about our firm and services and can be viewed on a computer.

These are just some of the ideas other practitioners are looking at for how to keep clients satisfied.

For other ideas, you may also want to see

• How to Keep Your Clients Delighted
• I Can't Get No Satisfaction, But Hopefully Your Clients Can
• Are Your Clients Really Satisfied? (Includes client survey forms.)

Last Updated: 07/25/2007

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