How to Create an Effective Client Onboarding Process

Hi there, Linda Artisani from the Accountants Law Lab. This week we're going to discuss how to create an effective client onboarding process. So we've taken you through all the steps to get to this point, and now we're really focusing, laser focusing on a great client experience. Those first impressions with your client are truly key to an effective client relationship and a happy one. So you'll have a good, Put yourself up off on a good foot. Depending on the client, there's many, many processes. We've been, this is the time of the year that we actually do do a lot of onboarding and it can tend to be scary for the client. So I think it's important to put yourself in the client's shoes to really understand where they're at in the process. They're nervous, they don't want anything to be missed, they don't want a bill not to be paid. There's a lot of working pieces. And it's important to kind of hold their hand. I highly recommend taking the time to let them know the time that's gonna be involved with them during this onboarding process. And, and giving them that heads up actually should have been done back in the, in the earlier conversations when you started to talk about actually engaging with the firm, because they need to know that it's gonna take some of their resources as we onboard. And it usually falls on one person's shoulders, unfortunately. We've set up so many different processes depending on the practice area, what works best. If it's a client that has a lot of client expenses that we need to track, maybe they're a firm that's an estate planning firm or a firm that's really heavy and maybe it's a PI firm, a personal injury firm, we'll have to have Dext, D-E-X-T, that software in place so that we don't miss any expenses. So it's really critical. To get the firm to understand how to use it. You might have to have training in it. If you don't have a training, it's important to maybe have the clients do the training with the software provider themselves. And if that doesn't work, it's, it's probably a good idea to have maybe your own little video so that you can show them how to use the program. Show 'em how to use it in mobile as well because we live in a mobile world. Everything's mobile related. Everybody knows how to use their phone and it actually, they have their phone with them all the time. So when they're out spending money on receipts, Tell 'em to put the name of the client or matter on it and then just take that photo, upload it to Dext, and you're ready to go. One of the other pieces we use, sometimes we use Slack. It's kind of organizes the conversations. If there's a lot of communication with the client during the week, we use Slack because we make the channels. So if it's a question about AR, they can ask it in the AR channel, and the whole, our whole company has eyes on those channels. So if something gets asked, Usually there's a person dedicated in the firm for that particular client, but the other people can keep an eye and say, hey, I noticed you had a question there about trust. Can you jump in and maybe answer it? Or sometimes the staff will just answer it for them so that way we, we get them used to meeting and talking with other people in our firm. It's also good for our global team to see what's going on. If they're in the Slack channel, they can kind of keep an eye on— sometimes it's things like, we need you to write off this list of invoices. The global team will handle that and they just see it inside Slack. It means I don't have to do anything. It just can be handled. We use Lycio for document, secure document exchange, another important place. And then those important conversations will be held inside of Lycio. Year-end work, we're heavy in Lycio with back and forth on the tax return information. They may upload their tax return for us to book our client's information to tax and things like that. We like to keep, keep everything kind of housed inside Elysium, get the client used to being in there. We do that right from the beginning of the engagement. But sometimes if you're adding people, that can be a little bit more difficult. So make sure that Elysium is easy to use. So it's not usually hard to get somebody on board. Sometimes the older folks, they'll forget. So I like to make that visual for them. I make a beautiful visual of all the workflows and how all the different software work together. So that the client may, may forget that Dext, that's where they upload their document in the beginning. It's there. We use Google Sheets as well. So Google Sheets are important because they're such a great collaborating tool. We do a lot of our 3-way reconciliations on Google Sheets. We want a place that the client can be able to maybe communicate, add a comment. It's wonderful. It's a very easy tool to use. Of course, we use Keeper as well, and that's another software that's really helpful when we're trying to figure out where transactions go, we can actually ping the client. The client can answer right in Keeper, which then just, we can change and adjust the transaction right there. We don't even have to go to QuickBooks. It all happens there. And the most powerful part for us is we're going to keep track of those 1099 clients as we go throughout the year. So we're not up against it in January, clock ticking, and we're trying to get all those 1099, gather all the information for 1099s. We're gonna do that during the year. And it's really simple to use in Keeper because we can actually send the client information that they can fill out and get the form right to us. And then it actually puts it in QuickBooks for us. So, you know, all these automations are really helpful. I think when you start to do the client onboarding, one of the important pieces is 99.999% of the clients are gonna come to you with messy trust and you're working in a project as well as the onboarding. So you want to have that delineated in their brain that yes, we're gonna be cleaning up last year's mess, and we're gonna be working cleaning up the trust, but we're gonna start here with the onboarding for the ongoing work. So if you can get that piece there, it's helpful for the client to understand where you're at with the project and where the software is and everything you need to look at that has to do with the ongoing as opposed to the past. It's kind of nice to kind of house that. We, we stick to Lysio for that past because there's so much information going back and forth. And questions as we do the project work. But then as the ongoing, wanna have some good simple workflows that work going forward into the, into the future. And we wanna keep it smooth. And like I mentioned earlier, you're gonna do a weekly meeting with them so that you're able to effectively get them used to the software. Because that one person that you work with in this meeting is probably gonna be the person that you're going to, that's gonna be heading out into the, into the, the office space and teaching all the other people what software that particular person needs to use. And like I mentioned, that one big visual helps everybody 'cause knowing one little segment, if the only piece the receptionist needs to know is one part of the AR workflow, we don't need to have them know all of it. But it's also really nice to be able to let them understand that this piece is pivotal for the entire process to work. So I hope that's helpful. Lots of tips in there. Great article attached if you wanna learn more. And on that note, I hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful week. 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