Successful accounting firms realize that customer satisfaction is the most important element for an accounting business to prosper. Such firms recognize that highly satisfied customers would go a long way in offering repetitive business. Furthermore, such clients would also help in referring new customers through word-of-mouth sales.
Thus, such firms always consider client relationship as a partnership. Even when the journey with a client may go down an unwanted road to “challenging” position.
Most customers are easy going, calm and receptive of the efforts made by the accounting advisors and consultants. Moreover, they understand the dynamics of the trade. In such a scenario, the clients compensate the accounting consultant or advisor with an amount based on the terms and conditions mutually agreed upon.
However, there are times where accounting firms have to deal with difficult customers. Experts believe that normally, 5 to 10 percent of the customers qualify as difficult. These customers are quite demanding, upset, angry or rude no matter how trivial the issue. At times, such customers can take up much of an accounting business’s time and energy.
Therefore, it is quite important for an accounting professional to know how to distinguish between a client who is:
- truly difficult or demanding but is uncertain for his business;
- challenging but is extremely valuable for his business
So, let us first understand who are difficult customers for an accounting firm before discussing the ways in dealing with difficult customers.