Category Archives: Customer Service

Everyone Should Have a Kelda

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In my role at XCM and Xpitax, I have the pleasure of traveling all over the Western U.S. visiting accounting firms. It’s always fun to see all the different shapes and sized in which firms come. One firm I visited had adorned their office with their extensive antique abacus collection. Another recent visit led me to the 24th floor of a Honolulu high-rise with a breathtaking view of the coast of O’ahu. On one of my last journeys to Northern California, I found myself dashing from one meeting in bustling downtown San Jose to an appointment in the quiet and quant little town of San Rafael (where they told us a story of the time they had a cow wander into their parking lot). I love seeing all these different personalities that show through the various organizations – all tied together by the fact that each of them serves as their clients’ CPA.

One morning, during one of my multi-city road trips, I got an email from a woman at a firm…her name was Kelda. Kelda’s email began with a brief introduction of herself and her firm, and explained that she had recently spoken with one of my colleagues who had referred her my way. Her concise but detailed email efficiently communicated that her partners were interested in meeting with me, and that she was aware I was in their area that week. In closing, she suggested a few days & times that week, and promised a follow up via telephone as well. Shortly thereafter, I got a voicemail from Kelda.

With my crazy schedule that day, we traded a few voicemails and emails before actually connecting live. When we finally did speak, I was pretty blown away by both her professionalism and her organization. She explained that the two Partners were going to be on a tight schedule, so she would be ordering in lunch during our meeting. She also gave me detailed instructions on where I would find parking, and how long she anticipated it would take to travel from my current location to their office.

When I arrived at their office (and found a spot right out front as she promised), I was greeted at the top of their stairs by Kelda, who was holding not only her business card, but the cards of the two Partners with whom I was meeting. She then had me escorted into their conference room, where I was again further impressed. Lunch was not only delivered, but everyone’s assigned places were set – with silverware rolled up into a tidy napkin as if we were dining in a little sidewalk café.

Upon the end of our scheduled time, we heard a quiet knock on the door – it was Kelda, there to remind the Managing Partner that his next appointment was approaching and he’d need to wrap up. As he walked out of the room, I stood up to say goodbye and added “I’ll make you a deal – I’ll take Kelda and you can have XCM”. Both Partners smiled and even chuckled a bit as they replied “Over our dead bodies”.
In reality, there weren’t any real mind-boggling acts performed that day. I mean, even I can order lunch and walk someone to a conference room. And yet I left that small firm in Palo Alto, California thinking to myself, “Wow, if they went to all that trouble for a software vendor – imagine what type of impression that makes on their clients”. I’ve told the story of Kelda to several people since then, which proves my point even more. Sometimes it’s the littlest details that make the biggest impression on people.

How to Change a Tire in 4″ High Heels

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I recently had the pleasure of crossing “Get flat tire en-route to important business meeting” off of my bucket list. Oh, wait, that wasn’t actually one of my life-long to-do list. Looking back at it now I can laugh, although, it really wasn’t too funny at the time.

Nothing like running late to an appointment and winding up stranded on the side of a remote mountain road near Napa Valley with no cell service (cough cough, see The Trouble with Technology). The good news is that I was smart enough to have my President, Glen Keenan, along for the ride (something I highly recommend when you plan on getting a flat tire), and we eventually made it to our destination.

As “we” hurriedly jacked up our Jeep rental car and swapped out the flat for the spare, I felt horrible about the fact that we couldn’t even get word to our prospect, who was obviously wondering where we might be. Of course, one would at least hope that they would understand the situation, but the business sense in me  says “I’d rather be an hour early than a minute late” kicked in, and I stressed the rest of the way there.

To my surprise, when we eventually made it (nearly an hour late), we were welcomed into the office with warm hugs and greetings of “thanks for coming all this way to see us”. As I settled into the conference room and began to catch my breath, I was taken back when the Managing Partner walked into the room with a bottle of wine…he opened up our meeting with a toast to the opportunity to all meet there in person.

I sat there and recalled a story my mother had told me as a child about a friend of hers who had visited a very poor village in a land-locked area of Asia. As her friend was preparing to leave, one of the natives presented the woman with a gift – a small bag of sea glass. Being a smart woman, she immediately realized and noted to the native that he must have had to walk miles and miles to the sea in order to find sea glass. The native smiled and acknowledged “long walk is part of gift”.

While a flat tire on the way to wine country doesn’t quite equal walking miles to the coast – the moral of the story is the same. People tend to appreciate when someone goes out of their way for them – while we might have been an hour late, we showed our new customer that we cared enough to make the trip to see them.

After completing the tire-swap, as we made our way down the mountain road, Glen and I realized that our strategy was flawed. Glen figured the easiest & fastest way to change the tire was to do it himself (I was very supportive by handing tools and assisting in other various “moral support” capacities). Next time however, we know exactly what to do. Glen will need to walk down the hill until he is out of sight, and I’ll be the one to attempt to change the tire (in my skirt and heels). When all the locals who drove by offering to help see me, it won’t be as bad if I take them up on it. And that is how you change a tire in 4” high heels.

Tire - Copy

The Trouble with Technology

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I make a living selling technology. I’m passionate about the fact that technology is changing the world for the better, and I’m proud to say that I have a front row seat to watch tomorrow’s technology become today’s reality. Numbers don’t lie. When we survey XCM users each year after the busyness of tax season, we are thrilled to hear that our technology often saves our clients well over an hour a day per person. On the Xpitax side, without both scanning and Cloud technologies, this outsourcing model would be impossible. When you look at it that way, it’s hard to find anything to complain about as far as technology goes…or is it?

**Warning – I’m officially standing on my soapbox in my stilettos**

Let’s be real for a minute – who are we kidding? We all deal with technology trials and tribulations virtually every day. How often are you tempted to throw your iPhone across the room when you’ve dropped a call for the 3rd time in 10 minutes (not to mention that you were still talking for 2 minutes before realizing the like was dead)? Sure it’s great that you can book your airline reservations from the amazing little device, but sometime you just simply want to make a phone call. How about those web-based training sessions that you’re struggling to understand because you can only catch every third word of the presenter and his slide deck is moving about 28 seconds slower than his talk track? Why do we all just accept this as “normal” and go about our business pretending it isn’t a problem? It IS a problem, because it keeps us from concentrating on our main goal.

From my shoes, I see two main issues with technology:

  1. Technology isn’t fail-proof, so when looking to put your best foot forward, relying on it is risky
  2. There’s just no substitute for face time

As technology advances and enable us to have more access to information when & where we need it, typically as automated as we want it, we are able to be more productive as we adopt the “self-service” approach. I know I use this every day when it comes to tracking packages online, paying bills, booking travel arrangements, and numerous other areas of personal and professional life. The danger comes when this dependence on using technology takes over the desire to have human interaction, and foster relationships with clients, colleagues, and partners.

Video, web, and teleconferencing services are in surplus these days – and the ability to
connect with clients, prospects, and even friends and family via GoToMeeting, WebEx, or Skype can shrink the distance between two individuals. These technologies allow me to start a Friday morning on a team call with my colleagues around the country, to present Xpitax to a firm in Nevada in the early afternoon, and to meet with a local SoCal accounting firm and show XCM for Client Accounting Services all in the same day – all without leaving my “soffice” (Sofa+Office). But what do I give up by not being in person at these various meetings? And what happens when the technology I’m relying on lets me down?

I sat in a board room this past week at a very large accounting firm in the Midwest. While I made the effort to fly out and be on-site for the meeting, I relied on web telephone conferencing to include my President in the meeting with me. By the end of the meeting, we had reconnected the web conference twice, and redialed into the teleconference three times. Needless to say, the flaws in technology were not only distracting, but extremely stressful too.

The saving grace was my ability to interact with the group inside the room, to make eye contact, read body language, and even poke fun and make light of the frustrating technology failure. Thankfully, the meeting was still a success, but had I not been there in person, it might have had a different outcome.

As the world seems to move faster & faster each day, it’s so important that we do step back and remember that deep down, we all value personal interactions. Sure it’s easy to sit back and say that it’s more productive to conduct business from your comfy office chair…but don’t underestimate the power of a real handshake. Shortly after starting at XCM I had the opportunity to visit two prospects in New York – both were very busy, but agreed to my visit. I have no doubt that the relationships I started building that week will continue to be vital to the future success of these two clients. As I arrived home late that Friday afternoon, I had a voicemail from one of the firms I had met with. The message said something like “I wanted to call you and give you the good news – because you were the one who showed up at our office…”.

So don’t be afraid of a little TSA pat down – before you know it you’ll sporting premier hotel status and plenty of airline miles to boot…go out and build those relationships – maybe I’ll see you on the road (I’m the one with the bag full of shoes).

Not Just Another Dry Cleaner

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I’m not an accountant…in fact, the one and only test I ever failed in my entire educational career was an accounting test (not that I’m still traumatized from that or anything). These days, the only accounting I’m qualified to do is numbering my high heels collection. I am, however, the ultimate accounting groupie – I love all my CPA friends like Adrian, Kara, & Dub-Dot. One of the things I most like hearing from them are stories about their clients, and what they do to deliver a great customer experience. When Shayna Chapman talks about one of the small business owners in her small Ohio town, it quickly becomes obvious that she is committed to delivering an amazing customer experience to these folks – and more importantly, that she truly cares about each and every one of them personally as well as professionally.

While I find this impressive, some might say that making her clients feel special is part of her job as the business owner’s accountant and trusted business advisor – but is it really? I mean, doing a tax return and keeping track of a balance sheet is not too different than many of the other services that each and every one of us utilize on a daily basis – for example a dry cleaner – but how often does our dry cleaner make us feel special?

When I bought my house five years ago, I spent a while exploring different neighborhood businesses; the hardware store, the coffee shop, of course the shoe-repair man, and several different dry cleaners. While I tend to be much more particular about where I get my morning cup of coffee than I’ve ever been about dry cleaning, I wound up returning to the shop around the corner that always sent coupons for 40% off services…hey, a penny saved is a penny earned!

Well as unconcerned as I am with who handles my laundry, I’m equally insistent that I should receive superior customer service wherever I go, but especially at a business where I’m a “regular”. So over the past few years, as my wardrobe has gotten a bit more colorful (and a lot more high-maintenance), I’m making more frequent trips to the cleaners. What I started to realize, is that my dry cleaner didn’t really value me as a client – she often made me uncomfortable by asking me to pay in cash vs. using my debit card and wouldn’t give me the discount if I happened to walk out of my house without the coupon that morning. The final straw came when she recently closed the shop unannounced by posting a sign on the door – not very helpful when you need your clothes for a business trip. My dry cleaning honeymoon was over.

As I tried to figure out where to take my next load of laundry, I happened to remember one shop in particular – they were a bit expensive I recalled, but boy, those people were friendly! I decided to try that first, and see what I thought. Much to my surprise, as I walked into Heritage Dry Cleaners in Irvine, I was greeted with a wonderful smile and a “Hello Ms. Hogan! Long time we don’t see you…” Whoa. Really? I hadn’t been there for four years, he remembered my name? Now that is what I call customer service. I’ll have you know, their prices haven’t gone down, but I’ve not gone anywhere else ever since that day.

Sure, any of us can go to the local H&R block for a tax return, or can take our clothes to any local cleaner – but I guarantee that the ones who treat their clients like MY dry cleaner (and like Shayna), are the ones that will become invaluable to everyone that receives that superior customer service. So my challenge to you is to think about what you do to make sure that your clients feel valued. What do you do to let them know you care about them? That and $3.95 will get you a clean skirt to wear!