The WhIP Journal                                                         

Have you ever been a consumer in a business where you felt that you were an annoyance to the employee dealing with you? That instead of being the reason why this person even had a job, that they viewed you as an intrusion on their busy workday?

Hostile, annoyed, or non-existent customer service is the same as bad customer service.
When presented with this kind of service, a client will most often:
-take their business somewhere else
-bad mouth your services to other people (she told two people and they told two people, and so on, and so on. You get the idea)
-respond in kind and be difficult clients to deal with

Is it possible that you or your staff are giving the wrong kind of welcome or interaction to your clients during this busy, stressful time? It might be hard to be objective right now, but let’s look, quickly, at what might be happening.

The most common reasons for bad customer service are:
Staff
-stressed, overworked, unhappy staff
-poorly trained staff
-poor role model, from a partner level
Clients
-C and D level clients (a.k.a. ‘bad’ clients)

1] Staff
Of course, I realize that you and your staff are most likely to be stressed, overworked, or unhappy at this time of year. I hope you’re attempting to minimize this as much as possible (see last month’s issue). Sometimes we give in to the same old-same old routine without trying new ideas that would allow some fun and joy to be added to the tax season grind. However, even allowing for tax season stress, this is still not a good reason to provide bad customer service.
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff at Work by Dr. Richard Carlson really helps emphasize the fact that being happy, relaxed and comfortable at work is essential to job performance and productivity.
The other potential problem area with staff is that sometimes we don’t properly train or model the behavior we expect to be given to clients. This should be a regular item of communication with all staff.
Customer service IS one of the key areas that determine growth or failure for a business. It must be clearly communicated to staff and repeated over and over (as in a mission statement). Great staff make for happy clients.

2] Clients.
I am not one to suggest that the client is always right. However, the client always has the right to leave and take their business elsewhere. So that has to be considered.
Just because someone is your client, does NOT make you their indentured slave.
As a professional and a business owner, you DO get to choose who you work with.
You DO get to decide how to run your business.
You DO get to decide how you want things done and when.
Usually these activities are in line with client needs. When your way of doing business constantly conflicts with a client’s idea of doing business, then you probably shouldn’t be doing business with each other.
There are clients, possibly on your client list right now, who do nothing but add stress to you and your staff, make unreasonable demands, treat staff rudely, procrastinate constantly, complain about service and/or fees, make you chase them down to pay the invoice, or want to operate their business with ‘questionable’ practices.
These should be classified as C or D clients. Get rid of them (nicely). There’s no better time than tax season to assess who should be removed from your client list. There will always be another accountant willing to help them. Then make room and new initiatives to add better, great clients.
Great clients make for happy staff.

Debra

Power Your Practice© 2007