When you’re focused on growth, it can be easy to lose sight of whether or not you’re providing top-notch service to your current clients.

But this “acquisition trap” can leave you spinning your wheels, pouring money into client acquisition as your current clients churn. McKinsey reports that high-performing companies create 80% of their new value from existing customers, giving them an edge over companies that don’t focus on retention.

Many accounting firms set a high bar for service. But beyond providing timely and high quality service, there are some key strategies you can use to target better client retention. 

Below, we’ll cover our top 7 strategies for increasing the lifetime value of your clients.

Screen clients effectively

When you’re just starting out, you may need to take whatever clients you can get. But over time, screening clients can become an essential retention strategy to select for clients that you’ll work well with over the long term.

Ask questions like:

“Why did you leave your previous accountant?” This will help you get a sense of whether or not they’ll eventually have the same issue with you.

“How do you currently do bookkeeping?” This question helps you get some perspective on the client’s own ability to organize and keep their records.

“How did you find us?” If they’ve found you through a referral, the referral source might give you some clues about what the client will be like to work with.

Tracking client acquisition cost and lifetime value is also a good data-driven approach to screen future clients. If you notice that particular types of clients have a higher lifetime value, you can screen for those clients in the future.

Make the scope of work crystal clear

When the client is ready to sign an engagement letter, make sure the scope of work is clear. This helps prevent disagreements down the road about what’s included in your fee, reducing the risk that clients will leave due to a misunderstanding.

Performing work out of scope also increases liability risk – so it’s a good idea to capture any additional work (and associated fees) in writing.

Often, a bit of scope creep is inevitable as you grow. But recognizing when it happens and updating your terms of service is crucial for better relationships with clients down the road.

Fine-tune your onboarding process

Client onboarding is your chance to make a good first impression – and positive first impressions can create a halo effect that influences how they will perceive your services moving forward.

A good onboarding process starts with standardization. You might develop a roadmap like:

• Send engagement letter
• Kick-off call
• Create client file
• Review client documents
• Follow up call

You can create onboarding processes as work items in ProCharted with predefined tasks. As your client base evolves, you can refine your onboarding process with a specific one to suit each client type.

Centralize client information

Make sure that everyone in your firm can provide clients the same personalized experience by centralizing client info. 

That way, you can provide clients with consistent service even if a team member leaves or gets sick. This helps ensure that a sudden change in staffing won’t affect your clients as much.

Centralize client information with client management tools that allow you to share notes, documents and work items with the whole firm.

Monitor your firm’s capacity

Burnt-out accountants will produce low-quality work. That means that over time, having an overworked team will lead to client turnover.

Monitoring your firm’s capacity is crucial to understanding whether or not you have the capacity to take on new clients. To do that, it’s a good idea to check due dates for all current work items and time block your calendar with the anticipated number of hours your team will need to spend on them.

From there, you’ll have a much better sense of how much time your team has to take on new tasks, and what additional due dates are realistic.

Check in with clients regularly

Once you finish a job for a client, consider offering regular check-ins. This could take the form of a regular email, a scheduled call, or an email newsletter – anything that helps keep you top of mind for the next time they need accounting services.

With email newsletter tools like Customer.io and Mailchimp, you can send branded newsletters with images and your logo. This can be a combination of a marketing strategy for new clients and a way to keep in touch with satisfied clients.

So what should you send them? You can try things like:

• Financial tips and best practices for their industry
• Accounting and financial news (such as new tax laws)
• New services you offer that might be a good fit

Email marketing tools let you segment client emails and track open and clickthrough rates – so they can give you a bit of insight into how clients are responding to your check-ins and what topics they’re most interested in.

Ask for client feedback

Clients who feel that their opinion is valued are more likely to stick around – and you can use feedback to help evolve your services over time.

McKinsey notes that the specific metrics you use are less important than how you interpret and work with the results of feedback. Closing the feedback loop (ie. acting on client suggestions when you can) is what matters the most.

Not all feedback will be actionable for your firm, but aggregated feedback can be very valuable in highlighting the areas you need to improve.

Client retention is a team effort

Finally, getting your whole team on board is a great way to uncover insights on how you can improve client service. Each team member can offer their unique perspective on your firm’s impact on clients and help you strategize in new ways.

For example, you might have a team member with technical skills that thinks of a new way to automate tasks – or an admin person who sees a gap in client communication. Collaborative tools like ProCharted can help your team add notes, suggestions, and feedback where it matters.

Make client retention a priority, and you’ll spend more time serving happy clients than you will chasing new ones. It’s a win-win!