Providing a Modern Client Experience

In this episode, the conversation between John Mitchell and Darren Root revolves around the importance of a modern client experience in accounting firms. They discuss the impact of changing expectations on client interactions and emphasize the need for a well-defined client journey tailored to individual preferences.

Full Video Transcript:

John Mitchell: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome. We are covering some great stuff today with my friend, Darren Root. Darren, conversation. 

Darren Root: You know, if this is one of your favorite topics, we're, we're, we're talking about a modern client experience today, which is a fantastic conversation. 

John Mitchell: You know, the, the idea of. Um, of the impact that your firm has on the human beings around you, whether it is your staff or your clients, we know, um, especially through COVID and everything we went through, um, during the pandemic that the two most valuable assets in your accounting firm are your clients.

And your staff, your people and your people. And so, um, one of the things that I love about canopy and one, honestly, one of the reasons that we're doing this, um, and, uh, and have developed a relationship with canopy is because of the way that they provide [00:01:00] less friction around their, uh, Client experience.

And this is something, Darren, that we have been really trying to find, um, something that, that firms can leverage for a really long time. 

Darren Root: Yeah, I think, you know, this whole idea of a modern client experience, it's just expectations have shifted, John, just so much. Um, Gosh, I mean, even pandemic post pandemic, you know, but I think it was really pre pandemic because of the, you know, the Amazons, the apples and 

John Mitchell: yeah, 

Darren Root: all those people out of the world, even Google, uh, the, the experience, the expectation of a better experience, I think extends.

To every industry, every profession, when you get a bad one, it just doesn't feel great. So we're going to talk about what, what a great one feels like. 

John Mitchell: Yeah. 

Darren Root: And then how leveraging some of the tools in Canopy helps you deliver that [00:02:00] as an accounting firm. Does that make sense? 

John Mitchell: Yeah. Let's start with just defining like what, what does a modern customer experience look like?

I know what it doesn't look like. Maybe that's the easiest thing to do is to look and say, you know, when do you know you haven't been served well? That one's easy. 

Darren Root: Yeah. I, I, I think. When there's only one way to be served. 

John Mitchell: Yeah. 

Darren Root: I think sometimes that's an indication that you're not being very client centric because Grant, some people want to get information on a mobile device.

John Mitchell: Yeah, 

Darren Root: some people want it on their, uh, you know, on their laptop or, or their machine. Some people arguably still maybe want a piece of paper, um, and maybe they want to ask you a question outside of business hours. Uh, you know, maybe maybe their their schedule, you know, if they see patients all day or [00:03:00] customers all day, you know, maybe they don't fit into the, the 9 to 5 routine.

That's that's your office. So, I think, as you think about customer experience, it's, it's serving customers. In a way that supports your business model, but serves them the way they want to 

John Mitchell: be served. When I, when I'm in a place that is serving me and, or I feel like I'm experiencing a modern customer experience, I often feel like they just made it easy.

And I think what that is, it's, it's a modern customer experience is actually a by product of a well run business. 

Darren Root: Yeah. 

John Mitchell: This is a place where the employees understand where they feel valued, where they're having a great employee experience. So they aren't taking it out on me when they, when I, when they're serving me.

And, and I think all of those things play into a really well defined and well thought out tech stack around your client experience. 

Darren Root: Yeah, I, I [00:04:00] like the idea, John, of a well thought out journey for the customer. So when you think about, yeah, when you think about that, it's from how does a, how does a prospect even reach out to you?

Like I said, if, if, if you're, if your prospect's schedule is not, you know, they're busy nine to five, they may be reaching out to you in the evening. So, you know, then it's, then it's about, you know, how, how do they digitally reach out to you, uh, potentially? Um, and then if they reach out to you, how do you get back to them?

You know, how do you send them a, uh, a proposal? How do you start onboarding them? How do they then do things subject to, to getting onboarded? Like how do they communicate with you? You know, how do you, how do they submit documents to you? How do they get documents from you? All that stuff is the client journey with you.

Uh, and I think that's the piece that [00:05:00] needs to be well thought out and defined inside your firm and then implemented with your customers. 

John Mitchell: Yeah, I think Darren, you said it at the beginning of this too, that there are many types of, of journeys that your customer might want to experience. And when, you know, you are in a, an antiquated customer experience is when you feel like you've been jammed into whatever fits best for the organization.

Um, this, this happens all the time in accounting firms around tax season that they do something antiquated. They do something ridiculous because it best serves a purpose. Them as a firm. And that's when you start to feel like, man, these people don't understand that I could go anywhere, or these people don't understand the value that I bring them.

Um, and so that journey might look different for every person and you need to be able to think about those different journeys. For instance, for me, Darren, I, if you want me to go into a bank, my kids don't even know, like last time I pulled up to a Chase bank, I went in because I had to do something with [00:06:00] my ATM card.

And Reese goes. Are there people in there? It's like, yeah, it's like, why are there people in the bank? It's like, dude, there's a time where that's where you banked. Now, all of my banking is done on them. I do it at 10 o'clock at night at two o'clock in the morning. I deposit checks. I do, I experience most of my best customer experiences.

On my computer, on my cell phone, when, on my terms and, and that is an option that Canopy provides that I just really love. 

Darren Root: I think in my experience, John, running an accounting firm for a really long time, it was less about me, um, wanting, wanting it necessarily to be my way as, as the firm owner, and more about being too busy to even think about what the customer wants.

Right. Or taking the time to, to look at what's available in the market, to, to think through how I could deliver a [00:07:00] better customer experience when the reality is as a firm owner, I should be thinking about what's the customer experience like. With our firm and then do everything I can to get our systems and processes in place to support that.

John Mitchell: Absolutely. One of my favorite tools for finding out how your customers experience you is to ask, just to be able to, to, to, to find your best customers and say, what is your experience? And maybe that's a survey. Maybe that's an email. Maybe that's a lunch. Um, but it's something that most firms either don't take time to do, or just don't even think about.

That there is an experience that your best customers have with you, that all your customers have with you that you need to be aware of. 

Darren Root: John, I think one of the challenges to creating a great customer experience historically for an accounting firm has been all these, um, disconnected or disparate solutions, you may have your documents in, you know, in one solution over here, you may, you know, [00:08:00] have your invoicing in a different solution and your payments in a different solution.

So it makes it really difficult. Um, To create a unified customer experience when you're using a disparate set of point solutions to accomplish that. So, as, as we've been talking about, John, this, this concept of a firm, firm wide operating system, which is what canopy does, it, it takes a bunch of point solutions, puts them inside of the product.

So you have a firm wide operating system, and then. It makes all of that, those, that data, that information like document sharing back and forth, uh, easier or the ability to do invoicing or to collect a payment on something much easier or having those client communications so that the client can communicate with the firm and everybody that needs to see that inside the firm can see it and communicate back, things like that.[00:09:00] 

John Mitchell: Yeah, you know, Darren, part of that too, um, every time you, you talk about canopies, um, solutions being sort of a, a combined point solution, um, man, I, I think about the experience visually, and I know that's not important to everybody, but it is really important to me that I pick up something that I like.

And that I enjoy, and that is, has a good user experience. Um, it may be more important to you than you even realize. Um, but one of the things I love about Canopy is their mobile app and just the, the ergonomics, the branding, um, the way that it feels really representative of, of what I want my customers to experience and the way I, I would experience, um, a modern customer experience.

And I, I love the fact that, that. You can use a desktop or you can use your mobile phone and get those same types of access to data and kind of bring all of the customer experience into one place, which is makes it feel like, you know, what you're doing and you know, how to serve me. 

Darren Root: Yeah, John, I [00:10:00] couldn't agree with you more.

The, um. The way that canopies mobile app and their, you know, desktop or laptop app looks or, or portal looks is a, is a representation of you as a firm owner. 

John Mitchell: Yeah. 

Darren Root: And it, it, it needs to have your branding. It needs to have your colors. It needs to represent your brand in a professional way. And to your, to your point, John, that creates a much better user experience.

I, I'm the same as you. I, I, I love to. Um, engage with tools that are aesthetically pleasing or beautiful. And, uh, no expense on that. Yeah, no, because it is, it is the essence of the client experience. 

John Mitchell: Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that I am always looking for too, in, in client experience, whether it's in my own accountant or just in, in anything that involves my money for sure is what's AI going to do, right?

Like how, how is this [00:11:00] going to be able to, to change the customer experience? What kinds of impacts will AI have on the customer experience? Um, and I know that's something that Canopy is really starting to think about. 

Darren Root: You know, just in, um, just thinking off the top of my head right now, just to give our listeners, you know, some ideas as to how AI may impact this in the future.

You know, I can see clients submitting requests. And then getting an immediate response, um, you know, I'm, I'm going to think of things that, you know, today don't exist in, in, in canopy, but, you know, you can think about for the future. Maybe a client wants to know what their, uh, employee identification number is, and they just need a quick question answered.

I mean, it's a perfect thing for AI to do. But it's, it's why it's important to have all these point solutions consolidated into one solution, because as firms start leveraging tools like AI, [00:12:00] there'll be a place that the AI agent, I guess, can go look and deliver that information back in a. Good client experience sort of way for the client.

John Mitchell: And like we always say, you know, when you, when you've got data in all of these different point solutions, when it comes time to leverage AI or insights or any kinds of data tools, you need those, all of those data points in the same place. Um, and one of the things that canopy has done so well is to, to bring all of that data under the same roof.

Um, and your customer experience is no, no different in that. So, you know, I love the. Conversation, Darren, that we've had in, in, in different parts of the series, even about the firm operating system, what it looks like behind the door at the accounting firm, um, whether it's your products or whether it's your tech stack on that side.

But one of the things a modern accounting firm does is regularly look at their client facing. Portion of their [00:13:00] tech stack. And so many of those things now, Darren, are starting to cross over the way that you work on the backside of the firm becomes also the tool that you use out front. And man, this just gives a perfect example of a place where the employee and the front facing the client can begin to, to communicate and work together in one place.

Darren Root: Yeah, John, I think the best next thing is let's, let's, uh, let's take a look. Let's show our listeners. What this looks like. 

John Mitchell: Yeah. Armin's going to take you through, um, just some of the mobile desktops and the document sharing some of the things that you can do on the customer experience side of the canopy product.

Take it away. Armin. 

Armin Kadic: Canopy provides two portal login options for your clients. The first is a traditional online portal. The second is our mobile application available on iPhone and Android. In the online portal, Canopy offers full custom branding. We can add your logo to the portal login page. We can [00:14:00] customize the URL.

We can also customize your background login page for your clients. Once clients sign into the portal, they have the ability to see payments, files, billing, and any outstanding requests coming in from their practitioner. Right at the very top, clients are greeted with outstanding balances. So if they do owe you money, they can make payments right here in the very top of the portal.

That link allows them to go through and process payments directly from their credit card or bank account. Navigating into this to do section, this is where all of the requests live that you send your client. Requests for documents, requests for electronic signature, requests for engagement letters to be signed or proposals to be accepted, those all live here.

Clients can navigate through the different requests and have the ability to go in and access the requests. leave comments on the request, as well as upload [00:15:00] documents directly to that request that has come in. Additionally, clients can accept proposals here. So if I send a proposal for, um, you know, proposed services that I'm going to offer the client, That can all be done from this area.

They can review the proposal, they can accept the proposal, and they can also set up payments if these are going to be recurring payments or if the money is going to be pulled in advance of the work being done. Navigating into the file section, this is where all of the documents that you share with the client are stored.

If the document is originally stored in a folder as it's shared, that's how it would be organized on the client side. So as the client navigates into the folders, They can access the different documents that are available to them in those folders. Lastly, all of the billing details are available here.

Invoices, payment history, credits, those are all available on the client portal. And if your client does have [00:16:00] multiple profiles, meaning they have multiple businesses or other profiles they're associated with, you can link portals together. So I can bounce back and forth between the portals I have access to.

John Mitchell: All right. So you can see from Armen's demo here that there are lots of options. And Darren, I just can't get over how pretty it is. It is just a great experience. It's what I want my firm to feel like when my customers interact with me. 

Darren Root: Yeah. I think if, if you're a firm owner out there and you're using a bunch of disparate solutions to accomplish this.

You need to start thinking about what it means to have all of this in one place. Um, because now's the time to one, have a great customer experience, but to start organizing your solutions and consolidating them down into a platform like canopies. Now's the 

John Mitchell: [00:17:00] time.