S01 E20: How this firm owner effectively manages communication across her firm

Roman Villard
Marie Greene, welcome to Accounting Flow. How are you?

Marie Greene
I’m good, how are you?

Roman Villard
I’m doing well. And I’m very excited to chat with you today because I personally have learned so much from you. So before we get to a conversation around communication and onboarding and the workflows at your firm, I’d love for you to tell us a little bit about you and your firm.

Marie Greene
Yeah, absolutely. So, I am the founder and CEO of Connected Accounting. We started the firm in 2019. Now we have we’re about 14 on the team total. That includes like accountants and an admins, we serve as clients in the accounting arena. So it’s everything from like bookkeeping, billpay payroll, helping you clean up the books, convert to accrual. Everything back office, we don’t touch the tax side, we have about over 100 clients now entities clients, in maybe like four different brackets. So we do really, we serve as a lot of professional service firms. So we’re talking marketing agencies, legal Wealth Advisors, landscapers, whichever. Yeah, we have a niche in SAS and tech, one in restaurant entertainment. Event Planners, and when in media, so we do a lot. In Los Angeles, we do a lot of media apps, s corps, etc.

Roman Villard
So you serve a wide variety of clients from an industry perspective, that all have very different rhythms to their businesses, different revenue streams, and the name of your firm Connected Accounting, I feel leans into the ability for you all to connect the numbers to their business. And you do that through workflows in my office, something there?

Marie Greene
Yes, 100%. I mean, the tagline is connected, because we want to be connected to our clients through the human connection, connected, because we leverage technology to help expedite the data entry. So we can really focus on helping the business owners make better decisions. And we do try to leverage a lot of technology. But even though we have the tech, you have to have the processes in place. So we have multiple industries, multiple different types of businesses, everything at the end of each month, follow the same month and closed process. And yes, I’m a huge tech nerd. And we do leverage technology for our process tracking, as well. Yes.

Roman Villard
I love it. I love it. And another thing that that I find very unique about Connected Accounting is that on your website, in the header on your website, it says our processes. And so just by looking at the website, you you get the sense that there’s a high degree of organisation, both internally for how you guys operate, but also externally of what the experience would be like for for your clients. And so it seems like from the get go, when you started in 2019, this was on the high high priority list to make sure that you had the efficiencies in order.

Marie Greene
Yes, I do have. I was lucky because before started with getting to the Accounting I built from scratch the accounting, the outsourced accounting department in a bigger accounting firm, that gave me a lot of like learning experiences, which do not to do so when I started Connected Accounting. The first thing I did was build a platform that tracks all the clients, all the steps for the month and clothes gives me a status. And of course, since then we’ve really expanded the way we document the processes and the way we maintain them because it’s really easy to document. Most people won’t do it. And then it just dies in the back of a Google Drive folder that nobody’s ever never opened. So how do you maintain and how do you teach the processes and how do you I’m actually doing a presentation that QuickBooks connect on how do you leverage the processes to facilitate training? Because if you try to standardise and you can document and you can explain once why you’re doing it a certain way, it will help the new hire or the existing hire, to learn a task and be able to apply it to all our clients.

Roman Villard
Yeah, that’s so good. And, and one of the things that that’s challenging when you’re managing 100 clients is communication. And so I’d like to spend spend the time today talking and honing in on on that subject in particular. And I know from from our experience, you could get emails, slacks, calls, texts, tick tock, whatever the form of communication is, your clients generally will try to reach you via a variety of methodologies and if you don’t have that really he honed in, it’s going to be very challenging to communicate well. And so maybe start by giving us a an overview of your current communication process from the time you guys bring a client on board to moving into a full cadence with them.

Marie Greene
Great. Yeah, basically, the way we like that there’s two big buckets for every firm, you have the client facing communication. And then you have the internal communication. For us, it’s very different. Because on the client facing side, we use a lot of, we use different tools. So it starts first step, if you contact us, it will go through sales at Connected Accounting dot QBO. That is in a ticketing system, that means that every time we get an email, a ticket number gets created. And we have preset templates that are the answers you receive back. So if you say, hey, I’m interested in what you offer, we send you back a preset template. So that facilitates the communication because no one has to redraft the same email over and over Sure. Every step of the way up until the moment you were working together. So I was going to say until the moment you’ve signed, but even afterwards, everything is templated. And everything is we customise it for the different clients. So we’d have it down to a science where you get these emails, if you don’t answer you have these kinds of follow ups. Everything is in emails for that. Okay, a few LinkedIn, like similar to what you said, it gets like, obviously, emails, text, Slack is internal for us, we have a couple of external, we’re mainly internal. And then LinkedIn is a big one, because we get a lot of people reaching out to us through LinkedIn. So we tried to like share my email and bring it back through the email. So even though in the communication may start with a phone call, or text it, we try to re funnel it through our favourite types of communication channel, which for us is email because we couldn’t track it.

Roman Villard
Right. And so you’re, you’re working really hard to channel everything into one point of entry so that you can then manage that communication workflow after the fact. And so did you set that up through Google Groups to do use Google? Is that a big part of it? And then you use a API? Or then how does it connect into a system where everybody has visibility to it.

Marie Greene
So we use there’s only one system so so for the management of our company, we use teamwork and Teamwork projects is really the full name of the product. When you take the project piece, we also teamwork has a is a hub of like five different products, we actually use four out of their five products. So we have teamwork, CRM, we have Teamwork projects, we have teamwork, desk, and that’s our ticketing system. So if you email support at Connected Accounting, or sales at Connected Accounting, it will all go through that ticketing system, it may be a different inbox, but everything goes through that system. And then there’s either like a preset template in the system you can use to respond. Or we have preset templates in the tool that we use called guru knowledge. And that’s where we maintain all of our processes, backups, as well.

Roman Villard
Interesting. And so so it’s really the shared inbox that then is allowing the visibility across the organisation. And that’s parameters. I suspect, if you have a management, email management has that support the right people have that. And so you set up all of that to make sure that not only is the security is high, but access is where it needs to be.

Marie Greene
Yeah. And in fact, client facing email, we only have one, which is support. We then have rules, okay, well, this client works with those three individuals, so they get tagged onto the emails, if it’s a lower level question, we’ll tag that EP clerk or the bookkeeper. If it’s a higher level, the accountant the controllers get tagged. So that way, like every email is assigned to someone, we track our response time to their response, there is one day and six hours for all emails, and then we track you know, so we can tell like, what’s open, what emails have not been? It’s the biggest complaints of clients. I’m not hearing back from their Facebook. Right? We don’t have this problem. We literally get alert if it hasn’t been done in 48 hours. So yeah, we’re a nonstop.

Roman Villard
it’s amazing. Yeah, it’s amazing. I mean, that’s the number one complaint that we hear too in prospect conversation is I just don’t get a response for my bookkeeper. And so to hear that you’re tracking it on a day to day basis to understand how quickly is your team responding? already set you head and shoulders above the competition? which is, which is really cool. Now, when you started, were you utilising this system this format already? Or was it kind of more bare bones? You maybe set up a support email and you were checking it and then sending out like, how did that work at the beginning?

Marie Greene
Definitely a gradual beginning beginning, it was like my email was used for everything. Over time, we created an admin Connected Accounting email that would, that we could use to link the bank feeds and those things. So I wouldn’t always be the one getting the, the codes over time, once we really set up our practice on to teamwork, for client management, deliverables, management and process sharing. At that stage, we started to look at their portfolio tools, and then desk was one of them. So then too many we really moved in fully, I would say early 2022. So it’s been a year and a half a little bit over that we use a desk and now every client has adopted it didn’t know if you email me you’re not getting fast enough. So you have to forward so I forwarded the support that email.

Roman Villard
Yeah, which is something that in the prospect conversations, you have to let those prospects know, you will not be the primary point of contact moving forward. So I feel like that’s a big fallacy for early stage firms is that when they have a prospect discussion, and it’s with you, and then you articulate how they communicate with the firm that then separates them from perhaps wanting to email you about everything and keeping you in the place and your firm where you need to be to help moving things forward.

Marie Greene
100%, and one of the latest innovations that we just did over the summer, is once you sign with us, it launches MailChimp drip campaign. Now you get a welcome email. In the welcome email, it says how do we communicate? What can you expect them to and it’s really cute and it’s pretty and I got marketing team needed look for any there’s even a link for you to be to you want to already discover all the apps we use day two, you get one for the apps, the three you get one more preferred, like ways of working together, etc. So then know what to expect. And again, we reiterate, this is how we communicate. This is how we request documents. This is how often we’re going to answer you. In fact, talk about level of communications, we in part of our proposals to clients is the response time. So you get 24 hour response time. Yeah, 48, five days, the more you pay, the faster we’re gonna answer. So they even at the stage of reviewing the proposal. See what like we manage expectations?

Roman Villard
Yeah, it is so important. And so, you know, thinking about the journey that you guys went on. So 2019 Start you said 2022, you brought on a firm management tool. And that was 22.

Marie Greene
We brought on desk, and I think 2020 We brought on teamwork. So it was really fast. The teamwork came in within six months. We used to use Monday from the first day of opening the doors, just using monday.com. It wasn’t scalable. So then we switched to teamwork. Six months, maybe.

Roman Villard
Yeah. And so what was it that led you to switch tools initially from Monday to a teamwork.

Marie Greene
Teamwork offers the ability to it’s really easy to navigate. Sure, Monday was great. But once we pass 20 clients, I can’t scroll all the time. I like having tasks lists that I can check off and being able to attach documents to task list track my time allocated to different people, etc. It’s now developed I think the tool has changed a lot and over four years before an accounting firm, we found that it didn’t have enough of that like hey, this is a recurring quarterly task, bring it back up every quarter, etc. So for us it works really well and teamwork. I know people use carbon the you I’ve heard of people using canopy there’s one called sending jet. Obviously not using it.

Roman Villard
Yeah, there’s so many tools out there. And folks like Jason stats are posting about these tools all the time. And there’s really bigger conversations happening in the industry of how a firm management system is so critical to internal operations and to find one that allows you the type of visibility you need across entire client base and works with your accounting rhythms. Like that is such an unlock and to orchestrate it the way you all have is fascinating.

Marie Greene
Thanks Yeah, we definitely nowadays it goes even further. So we have like Are these basics like of having drafted emails or templates, we also now in our Guru knowledge where we share where we try to keep, it’s really similar to like building your own wikipedia. I think Jerome Sherman is another version of that, where you can have one page for each process. You can have tags. So we have maybe for us a section called accounting processes, we have one called technology. So it’s all the apps, we have one called internal, like, what are all the things you need to know? How do you submit your PTO? How do you excetera so for each of those, we have a card and those cards expire. So it forces the person in charge of the card to maintain it, because every three 612 months, it expires. So we then document, how do we use emojis on Slack? Like, what are all the abbreviations that were used internally? What is the way you should name documents? What are the are preferred way for you to draft an open items list? So then we really detail whether it’s client facing communication, or internal communication, we really detail our preferences, Zoom etiquette, etc. So that people have access at all times to okay, what are they doing here with this? And again, just look, it app is integrated with Slack. So somebody’s asking your questions. Any question? I can just go in and just say forward slash, here’s the card. Read. And so yeah.

Roman Villard
That’s so cool. And so what I feel like that all drives towards, you know, both from a client experience standpoint, and internal, it’s just consistency. Yes, consistency. And so if you’re using the same same language, the same acronyms, the same emojis, the same zoom etiquette, that all drives towards a very consistent client experience that I would imagine results in higher retention, less churn more satisfaction. So do you track and manage that on your on your class, and you track the response time, but you track like a net promoter score, or anything that helps you drive that feedback, then back to the team.

Marie Greene
We have two types of scores, we have an employee score, and we have the client facing score. So clients get a survey every six month. And if it’s negative in any way, shape, or form, we try to have a column indicating like, what can we do better? Like how can we learn from this experience? If it’s an on the client on the employee side, every single month, we send a survey to the employees that we draft, we figure out which questions we want to ask. So we just had our annual corporate retreat. That means our September survey will be about what did you like, what do you want to change next year, but we always ask, how likely would you recommend Connected Accounting to a friend, etc. And then once a year, we also do a management Net Promoter Score, meaning the backwards like the employees rank, like tell us what they like and not, and it’s completely anonymous. Yeah. Each year in August, when we do the annual retreat, we then share all the feedback we got in the year that we can organise. We said, This is what you said, this is what we did. As a result, this is how we took action. So they can really start to see that they’re heard.

Roman Villard
And it’s it’s so cool. Because you know what all of that revolves around his communication. Yes. And so it’s communication, both on the retro evaluation side of things is proactive with clients, and then all feeds back into a loop of how do we get better over time, which is critical for an ever changing environment, both in the accounting space and with your clients. So let’s double click a little bit on on the client experience side of things. So let’s say I’m, I’m a client, my name is Charlie, that’s my pseudonym. When I don’t go by Roman, I’m Charlie. But I reached out to Connected Accounting, I go online and I say, hey, I need some accounting services. Enter that goes to your sales inbox, then it goes to a template based on what I filled out. And then do you send that email or is it automated back to me?

Marie Greene
To date, it’s being sent manually. Okay, we haven’t yet fully automated that. I don’t want to automate anything until it’s so smooth. So we’re waiting on that automation. We’ll probably do it eventually, why moved to MailChimp and then do it through MailChimp, but for now, it’s manual. So we just hit send. Then we schedule if the questionnaire you fill that shows that we’re a good fit for you. We scheduled a discovery call. It’s about an hour call. Same thing I have a template with multiple sections of questions I want to ask, first of all high level that your motivations, but I need to know what tools you use, what do you need from me like, and not just what you think you need, but I need to dive into like, you say, Okay, let’s talk about your bills, like Charlie, how do you pay them today? How do you do you sign a paper check who prints it, who puts it in the envelope? Who makes sure that all of your expenses on your credit card, have a receipt, etc. Second, I try to identify where the missing parts are. And then we build proposal. We have a call to review the proposal together, usually about 10 to 15 minutes. Okay, I present. Yeah, presented within the three tiers to you, you can ask me any questions you can tell me I like this. Don’t like that move this over. I customise it for the final. the right fit for you is everything is a flat fee, an incentive to you for review.

Roman Villard
Okay, so we’ve, we’ve gone through the initial discovery, where you’re asking all these questions and a good fit, I might be issuing paper checks for Bill Pay, which you might say, hey, we might do that a little bit differently, but you still sound like a good fit. Then we have a follow up conversation to walk through a three tier proposal and I say, You know what, I want that middle proposal. But can you add this to it, you then go back, finalise, send it to me, I then click Accept, I sign I hook up all my information. And then from there, it kicks over to a system where every couple of days during onboarding I’m getting those are those emails automated?

Marie Greene
Yes, every day, you get one, you get the welcome email, we understand some clients have a harder time digesting written information. So what we do is we say, Here’s your first email, by the way, tomorrow, you’re gonna get an email about x. But if you don’t want to wait for all the emails, Here are links for you to already click and dive into what we’re about to send you the next day. So you can be like, I’m impatient, I already want to know all the apps, so they get access to email number two on the first day, which is just linked to our website that shows them, here are the ads, here’s what to do, here’s how you’re going to get onboarding, you’ll receive an invite from this one. And then you’ll have to click and do this. And here’s how you will use it twice a week, you’ll log into the app, we use a bill for paid bill pay. And then on every we file all the we process all the bills, Tuesdays and Fridays. So we tell you, okay, is night, Friday night, you can go into the app, click Pay whichever amount or bill you want to pay. So we can all like, it can be a lot of information. So we tried to either do it slower. But some people were like, I just want it all in one time.

Roman Villard
you have options. Okay, so I’m, I’m Charlie. And I’m like, Okay, this is a lot of information. I don’t, I don’t know if I fully understand. I’m clicking through everything. I feel like I haven’t set up. Can I set up a phone call to say, Hey, I just need some help walking through this live? Because I’m more of a visual learner. How would that that set up if somebody kind of throws a wrench in the process?

Marie Greene
Well, the first email, besides the welcome piece also tells you, here’s what’s about to happen. So the next step is you will receive a link, you don’t need to create a password. It’s not a portal that you have to figure out, you just get a link, you click on it, and then they will tell you, here are all the things we need. So we need your QuickBooks, we need your bank for each step. Here’s either screenshots of how to do it, or a simple step by step. Your like the six steps or like a video, etc. Like whatever type of resource we have, we share it. So then they can kind of like expand, go through that step. They said, Yep, I have provided you QuickBooks access check. And then they go through the next one. Maybe some of them are as simple as like, drag and drop your tax return in this box or, you know, can you just confirm that we have the right mailing address yes or no. And so then they just you know, it’s simpler. So some are questions, some are documents request some or how to give us access. And then they know that then eventually we go through Okay, now, the law comm is set up, this is set up. So it’s still like because we don’t do it all in one night. Sure. She’s still incremental. We send them emails with updates daily, and what is still left to be done for them. If they need help, they email us we get on a call. If they’re like, I’m good. Then there’s a kickoff call. There’s a once we’ve gathered everything, we have everything, we’ve kind of caught up the books. So it can take a couple weeks, it can take three months.

Roman Villard
Interesting! So it’s based on how quickly I’m able to then support the onboarding process for you. Okay, yeah, so you’re putting the onus on ie not saying, hey, it’s gonna take two weeks, you’re saying, Hey, we can go as fast or as slow as you want to, but it’s based on you completely exactions.

Marie Greene
Exactly. So we go through it, we have an in house accounting transition meeting, where the accounting team in the, in the onboarding team meet, the onboarding team walks them through the balance sheet, p&l and the client style, then the accounting team is like, Okay, I kind of know what I’m doing. And then we do the kickoff, where we say, Hey, you loved working with Maria and Amanda will now buy this is your new accounting pod. So the email is the same with support, but these are the new people you’re going to be working with.

Roman Villard
Okay? Okay. So now I feel pretty comfortable. I’ve got everything uploaded, I feel good about the connectivity, the communication has been received, I maybe got on one call to get some support. And now the team has been transitioned. I know who I’m emailing. And so if I ever have any questions, concerns, I go there. What if I’m, like, I just need to call Marie. And I tried to call you, what happens? Are you like, Oh, this isn’t gonna happen? Or are you like, I imagined super nice and saying, Hey, I’d love to help you on this, but somebody else is a better fit. Here’s how you should go about reaching them?

Marie Greene
Yes. So what usually happens if they’ll call me for two or three reasons. It’s either a really high level problem. And they are like, you know, I’m about to lose my house, because I need my bank statements for the bank, like, what can I do? Like my mortgage is gonna lapse like something bad. So then it’s their right to try to call me, they’re either having a problem with a member on the team, and they don’t know who to go to, to complain. So they’ll call me or they will lazily be like, I have her cell phone number and me just call her. So depending on the situation, I always tell them, it’s always really nice to connect, because it’s rare that now I talk to clients. So it’s nice, I five minutes to catch up. And usually they asked me a specific question about, oh, my God, we’ve paid this like law firm. And I don’t understand what the team is asking me. I usually say, I don’t know the answer, because I’m no longer in the books. But here’s what I suggest. I’m going to send a note to the team on Slack, somebody will we will respond to you within the next 24 hours. And I’ll make sure that maybe somebody higher level is on the email. And and then I just bring it back to client feels like it’s been resolved. And the client also has, we have a corporate phone number. So if this they leave a voicemail, and it’s better that I answer, then that gets forwarded to me. And then they can also text. So same thing, we, we share the text like, Oh, this is for your client, you need to enter that. Got it. Got it.

Roman Villard
Okay, that’s fascinating. I feel as if char, if Charlie was a client of Connected Accounting, I’d feel very supported on the communication front. And my key takeaways and talking through all this are really centred around the visibility in the firm management tool. It’s the capacity to be able to link the connected accounts that you guys have internally to distribute the right communication, and then driving the message of consistency to the clients of this is how you’re being served. Going forward. What did I miss in there anything else you would highlight?

Marie Greene
Yeah, I was gonna say a couple of things like one that you made me think about the phone call. One is, I’m horrible at this, but my team is great at it. If the client calls or if there are, there is a kind of meeting happening on Zoom, that always do a write up. This is what happened, got off the phone, this is what we discussed. This is what’s next. It’s nice for us, because we have reference to go back to and then it’s also nice to make sure everybody’s on the same page. If a client tells us, you know, I take all the cash, and I never report it, can you just make sure that you only report what I deposit in the bank? And don’t ask me for a report? I answer back and I’m like, as discussed, we’re only reporting on the books what is being deposited? Let us know if there’s any other kind of income that you receive. We’re happy to add it, meaning like I’m protecting myself. I’m not saying like you illegally, you know, but I kind of summarise it. So that’s one piece. The piece we haven’t figured out yet that I’m going to probably start looking into at some point is the texting. We use the Google Voice, like we have the account for we use it to get the codes from the banks, we use it to get voicemails and calls from clients and then to place calls. And then we use it for the text messages, but it’s still like, I feel like there’s a better way or I feel like there is an integration that can send all of my text messages into a Slack channel that then we can tag people I just have not started to work on that. That would be a next step.

Roman Villard
You know, it’s funny because no matter what process you’re talking about or thinking of, it seems like there’s always a better way, there’s always room for improvement because what you’ve characterised today is far more efficient than probably 90% of the firms out there. And they’re looking at you saying, Man, I wish I could be like that. But there’s always something that can be improved upon. And so I’ll be curious to learn and your journey forward, how that gets accomplished, and to build upon the conversation about communication today.

Marie Greene
I will be excited to share with you any new tools or secrets I get. And I learned from others, the good knowledge came from Chad Davis at live ca. Other people have shared things I can I don’t know who to name, but I know some people probably were like, Oh, I do this kind of template, or I do this. I think we all learn from each other. And it’s the idea of being there’s not enough people in the United States today to serve as all the clients. So yes, let’s learn from one another. Let’s share our secret sauces, because it’s only going to help everyone and if we all offer a better quality of services, the pricing can finally maybe reach a normalised level, our employees can be paid a normalised like higher level, why become an accountant when you make 50k out of school versus an attorney when you make 120. So it’s kind of like how do we get it all together? And I think it’s really about being collaborative. And that’s how I’ve loved meeting so my besties and including you and getting to go to the mountains and skiing together and all those things. So yeah.

Roman Villard
It’s so rich, and I like to characterise that as when you build together you’re always gonna go farther and and like I opened up with I’ve learned so much from you. And I feel like a lot of people today have and if they do want to reach out to you if they do want to find you, how would they find you?

Marie Greene
So [email protected] Is my email. You can find me on LinkedIn at Marie F Greene. You can find me on Instagram @connectedAccounting, and just our website connectedaccounting.co

Roman Villard
Perfect. Well, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much for joining accounting flow today.

Marie Greene
Anytime. Thanks, Roman. Bye, guys. See ya