Anyone who has heard me speak at seminars or enjoyed my mentoring programme will have heard me refer to the ABCDE of client service.

I was surprised recently to note that in the last 2 and half years I haven’t already blogged about this. But a quick search reveals that to be the case.

I first used it when training staff in practice almost 20 years ago. It’s evolved a little bit in that time but hasn’t required much change.

When I was in practice I explained to my staff that the ABCDE of client service summarised the five things that clients most wanted from their accountant. I encouraged my staff to keep it in mind whenever writing, phoning or meeting with clients. I also used this as a tool to help convince prospective clients that I knew how to look after them.

So here it is:

A = Advice – More than anything clients want Tax Advice.  A is NOT for Answers  – See previous post.

B = Barrier – Clients want us to act as a Barrier between them and HMRC.

C = Compliance – We deal with all of the Compliance paperwork and processes.

D = Dates – We make sure that clients know when they need to do things and when we’ll do things, when tax needs to be paid and when refunds can be expected.

E = Estimates – We provide estimates of the tax payable and repayable and update these as and when the information changes.

I remember playing around some years back and adding further definitions for additional letters (F, G, H etc).  But none stuck and five is about the right number anyway.

Does anyone care to try to improve on the above?