Is Your Staff Engaging or Alienating Clients?
Source: The CPA Journal, A Publication of the New York State Society of CPAs
In this excellent article, the authors suggest that staff behavior is increasingly likely to alienate clients. The principal reason is more pressure—from Sarbanes-Oxley work, staff shortages, diminished reputation of the profession because of the Enron scandal, etc.
The authors interviewed staff members from large accounting firms and were surprised by their insensitivity to the effects of their behavior.
The article discusses behaviors that affect the firm and those that affect clients. Behaviors that affect clients include:
| Behaviors With Positive Effects Behaviors With Negative Effects | Timeliness Complaining to clients |
| Dependability Expressing dissatisfaction with the firm | Honesty Being critical of partners/managers |
| Professional dress Violating client dress codes/parking rules | Avoiding disruptions of client operations Violating client confidentiality |
| Showing respect Disparaging client products | Being deferential Making personal phone calls |
| Caring for client documents | Working on other clients |
Accounting firms may be paying too little attention to these problems. Here are some actions they can take:
- Set flexible rules. Find a happy medium. Get feedback from staff on the appropriate degree of flexibility.
- Explain the significance of each task to the job as a whole. This will make staff feel better about some tasks that are otherwise tedious.
- Inspire staff by expressing confidence in them.
- Reduce the competitive nature of evaluations by rating team performance where possible.
- Be fair in all policies.
- Learn how to identify stress in others. Then take steps to reduce it. This could be as simple as helping a staff member with an especially complicated analysis.
- Consider categorizing clients according to the degree of stress caused by their work. Try to equitably allocate the stress levels.
For the complete article, click here and select the article “Friend or Foe: Is Your Audit Staff Helping or Hurting Your Firm?”
From The CPA Journal, A Publication of the New York State Society of CPAs, August 2008.
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