Read this on a business networking forum and thought I should share it here:
This morning I received a letter from my accountants telling me that I had been voted by their staff as one of their clients that it has been most enjoyable working with over the past year; and then thanking me for my part in making their company a ‘great place to work’.
Wow. I felt great this morning! How often does that happen?
I feel this was genuinely meant as well. But the cynic in me did think – that’s very clever marketing for customer retention purposes… but if it is, it worked – so I am still happy and will still pay their fees this year!
For all you other accountants and service providers out there – you may want to try this…
Have you ever written to a client and said ‘thank you’? What feedback can you share as to the effect it has had?
Coincidently I was listening to FT journalist and plain speaker Lucy Kellaway’s podcast this morning. In it she speaks about the value of thank you notes and how much positive impact they have.
To overcome the potential cynicism with this strategy, the key for accountants is to work exceptionally hard to create an outstanding experience for clients. Put in place a communication schedule – visit them quarterly, have catch up phone calls, invite them to be a part of your advisory board, get to know them on a personal level and have fun with them. If you did this for your top 50 clients your firm would be transformed.
Mark, I shared this with my one of my best clients here in Australia, accountant in Melbourne. I added my two penneth to it as follows:
I have three thoughts:
1. Needs to be genuine – so use it with your best clients
2. Don’t overdo it – receiving a thank you letter once a quarter, for example, renders the entire strategy meaningless
3. See if you can link sending the letter to something specific that you have done for/with the client so that it has context (rather than just sending it for no apparent reason)
I would use something like this:
“Hi
I really enjoyed seeing you on Tuesday. It occurred to me on the way back to the office that it would be neat if all of our client relationships were like the ones we have with you. As I reflected on this, it became clear that we do our best work with clients that we enjoy working with.
So I wanted to send you this note to say thank you for being one of our very best clients. We truly appreciate the relationship we have with you and look forward to many more years working together.”
He implemented it straight away with two of his best clients and received genuinely grateful thank yous back from both of them. Both clients implied they were looking forward to working even more closely with him.