It’s a widely accepted fact that attracting new customers and converting them to clients is exponentially more expensive than retaining existing clients. Research suggests that attracting new clients costs 5 to 25 times more—yet most companies focus more on client acquisition than they do on client retention. This can be a costly mistake because it leads to client base churning and inefficiencies in workflow and productivity.
How can your firm combat the expense of losing clients while maximizing the client experience to retain clients and increase referral opportunities? The first step is to perfect your client onboarding process because this process will have a significant impact on their overall impression of and satisfaction with your firm.
Make sure to join the webinar, "The Intuit Practice Management Onboarding Experience" on December 17, 2020 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time. You can register here.
Designing an effective client onboarding process starts with a systematic approach. The process you use to introduce and integrate clients into your firm workflow is at the core of an onboarding process. As such, using technology that can streamline and systematize the processes involved in onboarding clients is key.
Using a platform such as Intuit’s Practice Management allows your firm to efficiently automate and standardize your firm’s workflows to reduce the time it takes to onboard clients while also eliminating common inefficiencies and pain points in the process.
The overall goal of creating a systematic approach is to free your team to give your clients more attention and while also ensuring that your new clients receive the highest quality service. Implementing a systematic, standardized client onboarding process will also help you optimize efficiencies boost productivity and support your firm’s client retention goals.
Use your client’s journey and expectations to drive the automation process. The most important part of creating the workflow to support client onboarding is to explore and understand how your customers want to be introduced to your firm’s processes and methods for delivering the services that that they have engaged your firm for. This is an integral part of the client journey—the period in which they develop trust in your firm and also
By anticipating and being aware of what your client is expecting and desires, you can create an onboarding process that both delights them and drives their deeper engagement with your firm. This is the opposite of building workflows that only serve the needs of your practice. Crafting your onboarding process from the client’s point of view, you will create the building blocks of long-term client relationships and subsequent referrals.
Leverage practice management technology to automate the client onboarding process. Once you identify your client-centric onboarding needs and workflows, consider how you can leverage technology to make the process streamlined and simplified. For example, if you use Intuit® Practice Management powered by Karbon with ProConnect™ Tax, when you create a tax return, the steps and workflow that need to be completed will automatically be set up in Intuit Practice Management. This is just one example of how you can use practice management technology to increase efficiency, eliminate extra steps that distract from being able to provide high-touch client service, and create the opportunity to earn the trust that can ultimately expand client relationships.
Proactivity is a big plus when implementing your client onboarding process. Given that the majority of businesses focus on winning new business instead of making sure that their new and existing clients are delighted with the products and services they deliver and the process by which they provide them, being proactive in developing an effective client onboarding process can give you a true competitive advantage. As you head into the new year, consider defining and refining your client onboarding process as a key initiative so that you can make the most of this opportunity.
Make sure to join the webinar, "The Intuit Practice Management Onboarding Experience" on December 17, 2020 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time. You can register here.