Building a strong rolodex of bookkeeping clients can be challenging. It often takes months of phone calls, follow-ups, and estimates to land a lead. That’s why, as important as it is to build up a client base, it’s equally important to put effort into keeping these clients. Below are a few metrics to keep your eye on when working with your clients to make sure you are retaining as many clients as possible.
Periodically Measure Client Satisfaction:
Periodically temperature-checking your client’s satisfaction is important to nurturing good client relationships, catching and resolving issues that may be brewing and creating opportunities to provide better service and gain referrals from your existing client base. Some of the simplest ways to do these temperature checks are client feedback surveys, customer check-in calls or Net Promoter Scores.
Monitor Your Retention Rates:
Retention rates indicate the percentage of your clients who continue to use your services over a period of time. High retention rates show that you are successfully creating and maintaining strong client relationships. Regularly evaluating your retention rates can help you catch any issues that decrease client loyalty and identify procedures that improve satisfaction, such as personalized service, loyalty programs and proactive communications.
Set and Measure Response Time Standards:
Timely responses to client inquiries and issues are the key to maintaining your client’s trust and satisfaction. Measure how long it takes you or your bookkeeping team to respond to clients and acknowledge and resolve client queries via email, phone, or client portals. Monitoring these metrics helps you identify communication bottlenecks and see if you have room for improvement. Set some guidelines for standard response times. Generally, it is good to reach out the day of or within the first 24 hours of an inquiry.
Measuring client satisfaction, monitoring retention rates and setting and monitoring communication standards are all great ways to lay the groundwork for good client relationships and retention. But, creating and maintaining good relationships requires regular and proactive communication, which can be a real struggle for many busy bookkeepers. If you are struggling to keep up regular communication and follow-ups with your clients, consider using a platform like LedgerDocs to automate the process of email reminders and document collections.
This will allow you to save time without compromising good communication and organization.
