Maintaining an open line of communication with your clients is important for any business, but when you have clients who may be nervous about their tax returns and have a lot of questions, it’s essential. You’re also contacting clients regularly to obtain the needed documents to complete the tax return. Given the significance of these communications, how you handle your messages from clients is crucial to their perception of your business and, therefore, your success.
You may look at a missed message as nothing more than a slight inconvenience. But to your clients, a missed message may signal that your office is disorganized and poorly run or that they’re not important enough to message back. In either case, a missed message will likely cost you much more than a few minutes of your time. It may also cost you a current or potential customer.
Why Does My Tax Office Keep Missing Messages?
Let’s face it; it’s impossible to return a call or a message if you don’t know that you received it in the first place.
Today, most businesses offer multiple contact options ranging from a standard landline, cell phone, email address, or text messaging. Multiple messaging options mean more opportunities to miss a message. It’s easy to get lost in the shuffle when there are so many ways for customers to reach out to you, and if you’re not careful, you can lose track of timely, urgent messages.
The key is to allow your customers to get in touch with you using their preferred method, but to have all of those messages funnel into a single, all-in-one platform that you use to view, respond to, and monitor those communications. That way, you’re accommodating your clients’ preferred channel but also ensuring no messages goes unanswered.
How Missed Messages Hurt Your Tax Business
You need to purchase ten office chairs for your tax preparers. You’ve contacted several stores, leaving messages and sending emails. Only one store calls you back. Which store are you likely to purchase the chairs from?
Missed messages impact the entirety of your business, including the following areas.
Lose Client Trust
Your clients trust that you will handle their confidential information safely and securely. They also trust that you will respond to phone calls, emails, and text messages. But missed messages, late responses, or even worse, no response will drive even the most loyal customer to seek tax preparation services elsewhere. They conclude that if you can’t be trusted to communicate in a timely, organized way, you will treat their information and tax preparation needs the same.
Missed Opportunities
To keep up with the demands of your clients, you must have a system that can help automate your communication and allow you to respond quickly and efficiently. Not only does this help with providing better service, but it also helps with your bottom line. If you aren’t able to respond promptly, you are missing out on potential revenue-generation opportunities.
Late Payment Collection
Your client called to ask if they can make monthly payments on their invoice. They’re waiting to hear from you before they send the first payment. Only they never hear from you. And you never receive a payment. The payment process is an important part of the customer experience. If you use outdated and inefficient tactics, you are unlikely to be successful, and you might even annoy your customers along the way. However, if you make your communication process seamless, you’ll be able to track when it’s time to collect payments and easily handle the conversations.
Lost Revenue
When you’re in the tax business, it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day tasks of running a business and forget that you need to stay in touch with clients regularly. If you don’t have systems for communicating with your clients, you could miss out on an opportunity to build relationships and generate more referrals. But it’s not just about keeping your current clients happy — it’s also about gaining new ones. Remember, it’s harder to gain new business than it is to retain current business. Missing a message from a potential client means that you just left revenue on the table.
How Your Tax Office Can Prevent Missed Messages
If you’re tired of missing messages, there are things you can do to improve communication for your tax business.
Use one comprehensive tax office management tool.
If you use multiple calendar systems, multiple reminder tools, and utilize a landline, email, cellphone, and text messaging options from different resources, you’ll never get all of your messages. Instead, consider using a single point of contact that will allow you to respond timely.
Stick to one CRM. Don’t keep changing your process.
Always looking for the latest solution to managing messages? Constantly changing your contact systems won’t improve your odds of receiving a message and will likely frustrate both clients and those interested in your services. Instead, choose an all-in-one messaging option that allows you to manage incoming messages properly.
Ensure messages are marked unread in your CRM until you respond.
Have a system that marks messages as unread until they are answered. Reading a message without responding will result in a lot of unhappy clients.
ProClient’s All-In-One Tax Office Management Software
ProClient’s all-in-one business tool allows you to stay on top of client messages using email or text messages, with both options easily managed in ProClient’s CRM feature. All communications between clients and prospects are saved in their individual files, so you’ll always have a record of important conversations.
If you’re tired of missing important messages, ProClient can help keep you get and stay organized. Try ProClient free for 14 days to see for yourself.
