INTRODUCTION
Now more than ever, effective communication is essential for success- especially if you’re running a business that operates predominantly online. Not only is it crucial that your customers feel confident that they can reach you easily, but it’s also important that you respond to your client’s queries in a timely manner.
One key aspect of communication that can very easily become challenging during busy periods is email responsiveness. At Freshwater Taxation, during peak periods our team collectively receive hundreds of emails per day.
While we’ve definitely had situations over the years in which we’ve kept clients waiting longer than we would have liked, we do pride ourselves on our general responsiveness and the systems that we have developed over time in order to ensure that no one is ever kept waiting or left in the dark unless a genuine mistake has occurred (which is very rate these days).
In this blog post, I’ll take you through the practical strategies that we implement here at Freshwater Tax in order to ensure that we are across our client communication at all times. Hopefully some of these will give you some ideas for the way that you run things in your own business.
EMAIL FILTERS GALORE!
Not only are we careful to route anything regular that is not directly relating to our day-to-day work to folders to view at a later date, but we also take it a step further and route anything sent between team members to their own, dedicated folder too. This means that what we are left with when we open up our in-box is client communication only + any advertising / spam material that we’ve not yet re-routed / unsubscribed / or attended to as required.
UNSUBSCRIBE
At Freshwater we have a policy of instantly unsubscribing to anything we don’t need as a key means of helping keep our inboxes under control. These days, it’s quite amazing how quickly spam and advertising material can start clogging up your inbox otherwise.
TASK SCHEDULLING SOFTWARE
As the owner of a busy service business, I’m a huge fan of automation and technology to help cope with demand and keep our systems as streamlined as possible. I’m basically always on the lookout for ways to cleverly automate, and I think in today’s world it’s vital to take this attitude in order to keep up your competitive advantage as a business owner. At Freshwater Tax, we currently use Monday.Com, Tax Dome and Xero Practise Manager to help streamline our workflow and reduce our admin and inboxes generally.
FRESHWATER EMAIL POLICY
To be honest, I’m known within our team for being pretty OCD about replying to clients in a timely manner. The reason I am so pedantic about this is because I know that when I’m dealing with another online business and kept waiting for a response – I definitely get put off. If you’re paying up-front for a service- online – to a person or organisation you’ve not dealt with in person, then in my opinion you should be provided with gratitude for your trust and confidence that a good job is going to be done by a responsive team. As such, here are Freshwater the general rule is no longer than 24 hours for a reply to a client is acceptable- 48 hours in peak periods. Having this policy in place, keeps us all accountable and definitely helps us to retain our reputation as a responsive firm overall.
DELEGATION OF RESPONSIBILITIES
In order to help reduce bottlenecks and email burnout (+ maximise responsiveness), we have developed a system that helps to ensure that responsibilities for email communication are distributed appropriately (and evenly) among our team members. Kate, our practise manager assists mainly on invoice & ATO queries, job scheduling, allocation queries and basic tax questions. Katrina, Kate’s personal assistant assists our team with new client enquiries as well as ensuring that our team are staying on track to deliver tasks to clients within our estimated turnaround times. I assist with more complex new enquiries, organising consultations, along with meet & greets and our general business development. Our accounting and bookkeeping team all work directly with our clients on assigned tasks. Delegating tasks based on expertise and workload ultimately improves overall responsiveness and helps to avoiding burnout among our team members.
EMAIL MANAGEMENT TOOLS
Email management tools such as snooze, reminders, and read receipts are a fantastic way to help prioritise emails and ensure that important messages are not overlooked. My absolute favourite is followupthen.com, a nifty little system that I’ve been using for many years now. If you’re wanting to snooze something for a later date, or even send yourself a recurring reminder – simply flick it by email to (example: [email protected]; [email protected]) – and receive it back when you need it to action! I don’t just use this system for my emails, but also general thoughts as they pop up e.g.: “contact Susan in 2 weeks to get a date locked in for her tax check in – late Jan”. This way, I never let things slip through my radar!
PHONE COMMUNICATION
Most people don’t take their accounting, tax and financial affairs in general lightly. When people have a question (regardless of if they are an existing client), usually – they want it answered quickly. Often they are worrying about something or have a curiosity that is occupying most of their thoughts. As a result, our team aim to be as contactable as possible. We clearly display all of our contact details on the footer of our website, along with the website contact page and, when we are not immediately available to jump on a call – we are pointing our clients over to WhatsApp where they are welcome to text or send us a voice note in order to receive a fast answer to whatever is on their minds.
THE IMPORTANCE OF PRIORITISATION (AND STAYING CALM!)
When facing a flooded inbox – remaining calm and prioritising is key. Firstly, I delete any spam, secondly I forward out anything that another team member is best handling, and before I hit any big ticket emails, I seek out anything that I know I can answer quickly (but thoroughly) in only a couple of minutes each – and I stick to my guns on that time frame, being careful not to go down a rabbit hole, providing a lengthy – unnecessary answer that ultimately will stop me from getting to every email I need to within a day. If a task can be completed within two minutes, do it immediately. This rule, popularised by productivity guru David Allen, helps to quickly tackle smaller tasks, preventing them from accumulating and adding to the overwhelming feeling of a flooded inbox.
HAVE A FILING SYSTEM
This probably goes without saying, but any actioned email – MUST be immediately moved into another folder. Ensure your system is meaningful. A clear and meaningful system will have you motivated to continue keeping things clear and ordered. I find categorising my folders by colour – and having sub-folders really handy. E.g. – Freshwater Admin – Freshwater Clients – Client Name etc.
SCHEDULE DEDICATED EMAIL TIME
Again, it probably goes without saying that in a blog post about being responsive and the best ways to keep on top of your emails that it is important to dedicate certain times of the day to checking and responding to emails only. I’m definitely an advocate of this strategy however I can also honestly say that if you’re in a situation in which managing your inbox as well as juggling your tasks is a constant and ongoing serious problem – then probably – you are doing too much and this isn’t going to be maintainable long-term. In that case- ask for help, step back – and take a high-level look at your systems. Do you need more help / delegation? Is there a role that automation could play? During our busiest months of this year – July, August and September – what I would do is actually clear / de-clutter my emails on an early morning walk so that once I dropped the kids to school and sat down to start work for the day, I already had a head start. If your working day is a constant battle, with no end in sight – then it’s time to take control of your situation and determine a solution that is going to work.
CLEAR COMMUNICATION CULTURE
Finally, at Freshwater Tax, we foster a culture of clear and concise communication. All of our team members are encouraged to use subject lines effectively, provide context in their emails, and be specific about action items. Ultimately, clear communication reduces the need for back-and-forth clarification, saving time for everyone involved.
CONCLUSION
Being responsive and accessible to your clients and customers is now more important than ever. By implementing our strategies and logic (above) you’ll not only keep up with an influx of emails but also foster a responsive and efficient communication culture. Prioritising, organising, and utilising technology are key components of mastering email responsiveness and ensuring that no important message goes unnoticed.
In need of a responsive accountant?
Get in touch with our team today, we’d love to hear from you.
