How to Keep Clients

Source: CPA Insider

Clients are bonded to CPA firms in three ways, listed below in ascending order of importance:

• Fees—clients may stay because your fees are attractive, but fees can easily be matched by other firms, so this is not the best way to keep clients.
• Personal relationships—these are important, but make sure social activities and personal relationships don’t involve just one person from the firm. That just makes it easier for the person to take the client away.
• Systems and expertise—the best way to keep clients is to provide them with superior services either by virtue of a system that saves them money (e.g., automated auditing procedures that reduce time of clients’ employees), or specialized industry or functional expertise. If other CPAs have equally good systems or expertise, the strength of this retention method is diminished.

CPA firms should invest in keeping all the above retention methods strong. But developing systems and expertise beyond the capabilities of competitors may be prohibitive. Therefore, the most viable method for many CPA firms is development of social and personal relationships with clients.

From CPA Insider, March 12, 2007, www.cpa2biz.com. For the complete article, click here.