You don’t need us to tell you that nurturing your client relationships is essential to the survival and growth of your accountancy practice. However, the last few months have changed many things, including the way you can communicate with them and the frequency with which they expect you to update them on the latest developments.
New ways of staying connected
Most accountants were used to having face-to-face meetings with their clients on a regular basis. With the beginning of the lockdown, everything changed.
Seeing clients in person was no longer possible, but they expected more communication than ever before because of the degree of uncertainty they had to deal with every day.
Fortunately, technology allows you to communicate with video calls with all your clients.
The added advantage is that you no longer have to spend hours on the road to go to your clients offices, so making the most of the tech available will allow you to still manage client comms from different locations and offer the best client experience .
However, it is important to remember that you still need to schedule these appointments regularly. During especially uncertain times like these, you have to reassure your clients and make sure they know you are there for them, to offer them advice and guidance when they need it.
Regular updates
Other trends that have become especially popular recently have been sending newsletters and even creating whatsapp groups for clients. This responds to the need of the clients to stay informed about all the government announcements and new measures that will impact their business.
Besides, you can do short video updates for your website and social media profiles, or even fortnightly webinars for clients who are interested.
Communication and advising clients about the best course of action is more important than ever in the era of Covid-19, so make sure you use all the resources available to stay connected with your clients on a regular basis.
Need support?
If you can’t keep up with all the work you have and you find you don’t have enough time to dedicate to speak with your clients, training more employees to handle direct calls with them might be a good short-term solution.
Otherwise, it might be time to recruit new employees. Even if you prefer to keep on working from home, you can train employees easily using video calls and tools that help you and your new employees stay organised during the whole process.
For instance, Uku makes hiring new people easy for you and for your new employees by streamlining the onboarding process.
You can create and assign tasks to your new employees and, whenever they have a question, they can add a comment to the task, which allows you to review all the commented tasks at a later time and answer all their questions.
Illustration by Icons8
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