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Accountants advised to focus on service quality

March 22, 2005


Koty Berenice thumb.jpgAccountants must become more than "bean-counters" if they want to capture an enduring share of the market, a Senior Lecturer at the University of New England has told a meeting of Chartered Accountants from throughout the State.

"Today's accountants are expected to attend to the quality of the services they provide," said Dr Bernice Kotey (pictured) from the New England Business School at UNE. She was speaking at the CA Country Congress, held in Coffs Harbour on March 16-18.

Dr Kotey, who was invited to present a paper at the Congress, spoke to the delegates about how they could improve services to clients and increase their income. "Gone are the days when clients stayed with one accounting firm out of loyalty," she said. "Clients are now better educated about service quality and know what to expect from their accountants."

She explained that instead of spreading themselves thinly over a whole range of services, accounting firms could provide high-quality service by specialising in those areas where they had the necessary expertise. They could then increase their breath of service through strategic alliances with practices specialising in other areas. "Clients could be referred from one specialist to another for different services within the strategic network," she explained.

Dr Kotey listed ways in which practices could improve their services to clients. These include developing a system that ensures consistency in service provision (so that clients requesting the same service do in fact receive something similar); keeping a client database with adequate information about each client; conducting customer surveys to assess clients' satisfaction and ways in which the practice could improve its service; attending to the environment in which consultations with clients take place, and empathising with clients.

"Accounting firms should listen to customers' complaints and learn from their customers how they could improve their services," she said.

She also said that accounting firms needed to attend to the fees they charged. She suggested that fees based on charged time had a number of problems and might not fairly represent the effort required to provide the service. "Developing a list of services and associated fees that represented the hours needed, realistically, for each service, and fees comparable to those charged by competitors, would be a way of ensuring consistency," she said.

Posted by Lydia Roberts at March 22, 2005 12:49 PM