Client Relationship Management

Intermediary Management and Business Growth

Getting new clients and expanding additional services to existing clients simultaneously are the lifeblood of a firm for continuous growth and development. CPAnywhere can serve as a tool for partners and managers to be alert of nearby business opportunities. For professionals, most business opportunities originate from referrals. A happy customer will not only continue your service, but will refer you, as his or her trusted professional, to friends and associates. Therefore, we have to pay attention to even tiny little details that will make your clients happy. A good referral system ensures that intermediaries will get rewarded for their efforts. Some firms may set up referral records in their CPAnywhere for easy identification. There, they can preset the normal incentive amount, be it a fixed fee or by the percentage of income, and view the intermediary history for each intermediary. Those functions in the system were mostly the suggestions made by our users in their practical day-to-day experience.

Customer History at a Glance

What do your clients love? They love you because you care! Therefore, knowing every single bit of information about your client “before” talking to them will become a partner’s most important task. CPAnywhere allows you to view almost the whole “history”, including the client’s comments to your firm or staff, his or her past contacts, and communications with your firm, as well as any related companies. This is your winning weapon to show that you care, and a matter of overall versus fragmentary knowledge of your clients!

Customer File Cabinet in the Database

You can store and access your customers’ permanent files as well as other documents related to a particular Job Assignment or correspondence in the database. This feature comes in handy especially when your staff is on the field and needs to return the original to your clients after inspection. All he or she needs to do is to upload the electronic version of the original documents to the client’s “file cabinet” via the system. For easy retrieval, you can define whether a file belongs to “Permanent File”, “Job Assignment” or “Correspondence”.

CPAnywhere allows you to send newsletters, notifications, or messages to your clients in an effortless way. You can define a specific group of customers as the recipients. For example, if there is news affecting real property developers and you want to send notifications to your clients belonging to that industry, all you need to do is to pick the right “Industry Type”, in this case, the “Real Property Developer”, add the message and include the source of information, then click [Send]. This small function will let your clients feel that you do care about their welfare.

Courier Cover Sheet

This seems to be a very small matter but not so to your staff or secretaries who frequently need to handle mailing matters, fast and accurately, without writing down an incorrect address or addressee. One of our users suggested this “small function” earlier and we found it very useful. That’s why we added this under the Customer menu for easy access by your front-line staff in the mailing matter. Accuracy and speed count.

Prospective Customer

To get a new client, we recognized that there are different stages of sales processes to go through. CPAnywhere has a specific function for you pre-define a maximum of five such stages and to record details of every sales process. Let’s use our company as a software vendor as an example: 1. Telephone Enquiry 2. Request for Information 3. Product Demonstration 4. Request for Quotation 5. Place Order Every company is different. You can set your types of sales processes to fit your own needs. However, the important point is that someone has to follow the lead. With this function, partners or managers can review those outstanding prospective customers from time to time to follow up.

Customer Service Log

In order to keep track of all important inquiry calls from customers, we have set up an easy-to-follow Customer Service Log. The receiver will write down the caller’s concern and whether the issue needs to be followed up further. The most important part is “Who” is following the case. Simple and straightforward, this feature prevents any frustration from your clients for not following up on the case. Because the function keeps track of each important staff-client interaction, it allows anyone in your firm to know the history and the issue involved.

Correspondence

Most professional firms need to deal with a large amount of correspondence with different government agencies, for example, the Inland Revenue Department for tax issues. One of our customers which is a CPA firm has over 10,000 letters at any given time to deal with the IRD. Before adopting CPAnywhere, they had a standalone custom-made program to keep track of all these. After adopting CPAnywhere, they asked us to revamp and include this feature in the system. Their wealth of experience in handling correspondence benefited all other CPAnywhere users. Avoiding any delay, missed deadline, or penalty with the IRD certainly prevents your clients from any unnecessary trouble.

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