When you bring new clients into your practice, does your onboarding process make them go ‘WOW’ or does it leave them yawning?
A WOW Experience
We recently had a burst water pipe in our house and it created a bit of a mess. So we called up the insurance company and they put us in touch with their builders. The building company phoned up straight away to make an appointment for the surveyor, and on the day the surveyor came he phoned up about 2 hours ahead to let us know when he’d arrive. When he arrived he was a super nice guy and left us smiling for hours afterwards. A few days later I got a call from their office saying “on a scale of 0-10 how would you rate your experience with us so far?” And I had to give them a 10, I was very impressed. What’s interesting to note is that most of what happened so far had nothing to do with ‘building’. Everything that happened was about great customer service leaving us saying ‘WOW’.
So the question for you in your practice is ‘do you WOW your clients?’
Today we’re going to be looking specifically at the ‘onboarding process’ and how you can use this to WOW your clients from day 1!
The Onboarding Matrix
So the 4 corners of the onboarding matrix are:
1. Ad hoc – when somebody remembers to get round to doing it
2. Streamlined – it’s systemised, it happens whether you think about it or not
3. Boring – is exactly that, it bores your clients
4. Exciting – this is where it becomes really interesting for your clients and they want to tell their friends about it
So when we have a boring & ad hoc onboarding process, we are in the ‘graveyard’ quadrant, what I like to call ‘death valley’. It only happens when somebody remembers, and when they do remember it’s pretty boring. The interesting thing here is that if it’s happening in one part of your practice, it may be happening in other parts of your practice. So when we’re in this ‘graveyard’ quadrant, ultimately you’re leaving yourself open to attack from much more proactive practices.
If we have an exciting & ad hoc onboarding process then we are in the ‘stutter’ quadrant. In other words what we’re doing is good and really interesting, except it only happens when somebody remembers. This causes a ‘stutter’ in our systems.
If the onboarding process is boring but streamlined, then well done at least you have it systemised, but this is what creates the ‘yawn’ from clients. This ‘yawn’ could also leave you open to attack from more proactive exciting practices, and definately doesn’t leave clients telling all their friends about you.
In the final quadrant we have a streamlined onboarding process and what we do is really interesting and exciting, which is why it’s called the ‘WOW’ quadrant, we ‘WOW’ our new clients. They go away and tell all their friends and colleagues about what happened to them and how impressed they are with their new accountancy practice. This is ideally where you want to end up!
Which Quadrant Are You In?
So I’ve just shared with you the 4 quadrants of the onboarding matrix. I have one question for you, in which of those 4 quadrants are you spending most of your time at the moment?
Let me know in the comments section below and we can continue the conversation down there.
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