The Secret to Happier Accounting Clients

It’s an age-old question every business has faced: What will make your buyer return? If they do, what made them a happy customer? And can you do it again?

Consumer businesses are used to taking their customers’ temperature all the time. From email surveys and birthday gift cards to offering customers exclusive access to merchandise, B2C companies are laser-focused—not on just the sale but on the return sale.

Professional services companies, like accounting firms with outsourced accounting teams, are also in the business of pleasing clients. But when was the last time your business verified that your clients are not just satisfied but happy?

Does your firm measure client satisfaction with a net promoter score? Or do you survey your clients on a regular basis? And if you do, what have you discovered will create happier clients?

Start with Relaxed (Not Overwhelmed) Employees

In a lot of ways, many accounting firms are focused on trying to make their employees as happy as possible, following the logic that happy employees lead to stronger recruiting, which ultimately leads to happier accounting clients.

The first step to happy employees starts with making their lives a whole lot more manageable.  It's very possible that in the next several months, it may be a lot more challenging for you to grow the human side of your team, and your existing team may be confronted with workloads that are (to put it mildly) extremely challenging.

But something a lot of people don't think about is when you're being forced to do more with less, technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) can actually help your team scale more gracefully than adding a human headcount. By using AI, in many cases, you can increase the capacity of work you can take on, because your existing team members will now have the time to get a lot more done.

And this saved time, in turn, can help your clients. Your business will run better, grow faster, and become more profitable.

Let AI and Accounting Technology Support Your Workforce and Your Accounting Clients

So, when you think about labor constraints and candidate shortages that can prevent you from having the time to give true value to your clients, it's important to understand that can help reduce or eliminate some of these bottlenecks.

And as the AI technology itself matures, you will be able to scale into other parts of your practice. This is especially relevant if your firm does client accounting services, or outsourced accounting.

According to our recent survey, 60% of respondents shared that outsourced accounting was responsible for over 50% of their revenue. This means that as this line of business continues to grow, AI technology will become a more important factor—not just in boosting the morale of your employees but in gifting you with happy clients and future customers.