Accounting Firm Loyalty Programs -- Do You

Developing a strong accounting practice means accountants have to move outside of their comfort zone into the world of marketing. Accountants who start their own practices often lose sight of this basic fact. They focus on servicing the accounting needs of their clients at the expense of new client acquisition and relationship building with existing clients. How strong are your accounting firm’s marketing capabilities? A quick analysis of your customer touchpoints can give you insights into how you are doing relative to other firms.

Customer Touchpoints

Touchpoints is a concept that isn’t taught in most accounting programs. For an accounting firm, a marketing touchpoint is simply any meaningful moment where your client comes in contact with your firm and its brand.

For an accounting firm, there are many touchpoints. When you send a financial statement to a client, that’s a touchpoint. When you send an invoice to a client, that’s a touchpoint. When you send a client a tax worksheet or tax organizer to help you gather and sort your tax information, that’s a touchpoint. Even a phone call to a client is a touchpoint.

You get the idea. Any time you interact with a client, you’ve created a touchpoint and every touchpoint is an opportunity to strengthen that client’s loyalty to your firm.

We’ll discuss the ways to maximize touchpoint outcomes in a way that increases client loyalty shortly, but first let’s take a look at how many touchpoints you currently have.

Take the Customer Touchpoints Quiz

To see whether you are using customer touchpoints to your advantage, take this quick touchpoints quiz. Give yourself five points for every “Yes” answer and zero points for a “No” answer.

1. Do you speak with each of your clients at least once every two weeks?

2. Do you ever send articles to your clients on topics that might be of interest to them?

3. When you send an invoice to your client, do you include any additional materials that might strengthen your client’s loyalty and encourage them to continue to work with you.

4. When you send a tax organizer or financial statements, do you include additional loyalty-building materials?

5. Do you process payroll for your clients as a way to increase your number of client interactions and add extra value?

6. Do you socialize with each of your clients (e.g. grab lunch, play a game of golf) at least once a month?

7. Do you send out holiday cards to your clients?

8. Do you have a Web site that provides useful information to your existing clients and to prospective clients?

If you scored 30 points or more on the quiz, you are in pretty good shape. If you scored less than 30 points, you may be at risk of losing your existing customers and failing to attract enough new clients to grow your business. It’s time to start thinking about increasing the number of interactions you have with each of your clients.

Generally speaking, the more touchpoints you have with clients, the higher your client loyalty. Client loyalty means client retention, which translates to greater revenues and more referrals.

Maximizing Touchpoint Effectiveness

When it comes to customer touchpoints, there’s power in numbers — but it’s touchpoint quality that is truly important.

Because your customer interactions dramatically influence the perceptions, motivations, and actions of both prospects and customers, it’s a good idea to list out every touchpoint you have and brainstorm on ways to improve.

Even something as simple as printing “Have a great day!” at the bottom of your invoices can make a difference in your efforts to build customer loyalty.

It’s time to get started. Set a date and time next week to list out your marketing touchpoints and analyze how you can ensure that every touchpoint delivers an excellent customer experience. Before you know it, you’ll have a host of new clients and your worries about client retention will be yesterday’s news.

Michael Alter is president of SurePayroll, a payroll outsourcing firm that processes and remits payroll taxes for over 16,000 small business clients across the country. Much of SurePayroll’s business is powered by private-label payroll and payroll referral partnerships with accounting firms. For additional information, visit www.surepayroll.com.