How Does Outsourcing Improve Client Satisfaction?

Accounting firms that outsource some of their business operations to a third-party vendor have witnessed substantial growth in their bottom line, along with reduced operating costs and improved work efficiency. In addition to these apparent benefits, one of the often overlooked benefits of outsourcing accounting services is improved client satisfaction.

If done right, outsourcing can enhance your client satisfaction by improving the quality of your customer interactions, increasing your firm’s availability to customers, and providing your customers access to expert services at their convenience.

Client experience is one of the key differentiators between the failure and success of an accounting firm. It is your clients’ perception of how your firm treats them, and these perceptions affect their engagement levels with your firm and drive their loyalty. Here’s some more food for thought:

• By 2020, customer experience will overtake product and price as the key differentiator. (Source: Walker)
• More than half of your clients will be willing to pay more only if you improve customer experience. (Source: Qminder)
• US businesses lose up to $62 billion due to poor customer experience. (Source: New Voice Media)

From updated accounting tools to data security concerns, from ever-changing regulatory laws to rising client expectations, accounting firms often have a ton to handle. Attempting to overcome each one of these challenges using in-house resources can be costly and difficult, if not impossible.

Partnering with a reliable, client-centric, and innovative outsourcing company, like QXAS, can help accounting firms respond effectively to their clients’ needs and earn their loyalty. Here are some of the ways outsourcing accounting services can improve your client satisfaction:

1. Widens your availability

Your customers may have queries at all times of the day. They may like the ability to contact your staff to inquire about some data or service either in business hours, while commuting to and from work, after business hours or weekends while sitting at home.

One of the benefits of outsourcing your accounting services is that it will widen your firm’s availability, enabling you to assist and convert clients even beyond normal business hours. Even if you are a small practice, having around the clock availability to your clients gives the image of a much larger practice with more authority.

2. Allows you to focus on core functions

Extending support to your clients is an important function, but it is not the key function of your firm. Spending too much time and effort on secondary processes prevents you from focusing on the core functions of your business.

Once you have outsourced your accounting processes to an outside firm, you are no longer accountable for recruiting, hiring, and training the employees who fulfill that role. The less time you spend on non-core issues, the more time you have for the core business functions.

3. Strengthens customer service

Accounting firms can get better client service (and hence, satisfaction) with an outsourcing partner than an in-house team. Firms outsource because they want to improve their customer experience and also because they are not keen on investing in in-house resources. Some firms have even won awards for client service that is outsourced.

Outsourcing can help firms be clearer about what they are trying to do for their clients. So if you are going to outsource your accounting services, it is going to strengthen your customer service.

Conclusion

Outsourcing your accounting services can improve your client experience by increasing your availability and improving your service quality. There are clear business benefits to outsourcing accounting services in the form of enhanced client experience.

However, this requires commitment from an accounting firm to do it for the right reasons, with the right partner and using the right model. Look into your outsourcing options thoroughly, and choose the one that fits your business model.