S02 E07: Balancing tech and touch: How to personalize client experiences in automated processes

Roman Villard

What’s up, everyone? Welcome to the Accounting Flow podcast, brought to you by Financial Cents. This podcast is dedicated to profoundly diving into accounting firm workflow and processes. In each episode, we will spend 20 minutes interviewing accounting firm owners like you, uncovering specific daily processes that firm owners and operators encounter and discussing ways to improve them. Let’s go.

Welcome to another episode of Accounting Flow. Today, we have the fabulous Heather Smith, an accountant and storyteller. Today’s topic is balancing tech and touch: how to personalize client experiences in an automated fashion. Heather, thanks for joining.

Heather Smith

Thanks for having me on the show, Roman. I’m looking forward to our conversation today. With such a meaningful conversation, we’re covering the whole spectrum of the world.

Roman Villard

We are, I love it. I love having perspectives from not only across our community but across the world. It’s so fascinating to me. One of the things that I wanted to bring up that I find interesting is your LinkedIn profile. I’m going to read your experience. I run a 100% digital practice focused on management accounting. I sit at the intersection of accounting, education, and content creation; I educate the community to embrace accounting apps positively. I would love for you to unravel that a little bit. It’s so intriguing to me.

Heather Smith

Absolutely. I see a need for something and then chase after it and work out how to get paid later. I’m not necessarily the most commercially savvy person out there. But what I saw was a decade ago, Rod Drury came to me, and he said, Hey, Rod Drury, founder, and CEO of Xero, can you write a book about Xero so we can have it in Amazon and iTunes Store? And so I went ahead and wrote a book called Xero for Dummies, but also, during that process, realized that the apps, the ecosystem that was building up around Xero, which is also sitting around Intuit, and was also sitting around all the other apps were incredibly exciting. And there was so much opportunity for it, but people were overwhelmed by it. And I know that my skill set is my background as a trainer; I’ve taught accounting at universities for years and trained 1000s of people in small business. My background and skill set explain things. So, I kept working out different ways to describe the apps or the ecosystem to the accounting and bookkeeping community so they could embrace them and see that humans were running those businesses. As accountants and bookkeepers, we love small businesses. So, see that humans were running those businesses and how they could work with them to build solutions that would help their client base. In doing that, I sit in the management accounting space. No one wants me to do their taxes. I failed taxes three times in the past in my tax unit. OK, I have a global accounting qualification and studied two International Accounting Standards. And I now hold three actual professional qualifications. So I’m so overqualified, but you don’t want me doing your taxes; I love the ability to massage the data, get the accurate data in there on a timely basis, so that the business owners are empowered to make better business decisions because a business is just a collection of decisions. And the more we can implement and automate those decisions, the more accurate data we can surface to help assist in making those decisions, which is essential. In saying that, the gut is critical and should be listened to when making those decisions, which weaves into the human aspect of this conversation. So, Arne has evolved to clarify that I have an accounting Apps newsletter. I have an accounting apps community with 6000 Plus advanced users and an accounting apps Podcast. I’m so very focused on talking about this topic, and I’m very fortunate I travel around the world talking about it. I’ve just come back from Birmingham. I’m sitting here with my tiger, Muggsy. They’re from Singapore, where I was just at the end of last year. Management accounting is a universal global topic. And with automation and the integration of apps, we can do amazing things. And I would like to bring this to a very introductory level and work through that. So people can embrace it. And it’s fascinating to see it happen all over the world.

Roman Villard

It is, and it’s happening happening quickly. And there’s a change in our industry where tech adoption rapidly improves AI and creates much change in our space. And a lot of what you’ve characterized is how you educate the broader market on what’s happening in this tech ecosystem. To your point, humans are the ones making the decisions; we are selling to humans, we’re working with humans, there is an intrinsic nature of creating quality human relationships, and you talk a lot about community. I’d love to hear your perspective on how you see tech and human interaction moving forward in a quality way because it takes work to do or even understand.

Heather Smith

That is an excellent question and what I think as humans, so if we take it one step back when we talk about AI and all of the technology across the US, in very simplistic terms, that’s algorithms, which, as accountants, we understand. And that’s data sets, which we know for candidates. As accountants, we can access many different data sets, whether our own or government data. And AI is the intersection of those algorithms and those data sets. Humans can augment, enhance, and amplify how we use it. So, when working with our clients and developing a forecast that leverages AI and technology, we can have a real human conversation. Sometimes, that human conversation brings in common sense, which is not necessarily always familiar to the conversation so that they are in a position to understand they’re in a position to go and what you’ve predicted is reasonable or not reasonable. That’s one of the lessons I always ask my clients: does the data seem reasonable?

Because I can bring it to a particular position, but I don’t have that gut instinct; I know that I’ve not lived and breathed every sale in that business they have. And I want them to be able to look at the data I give them. Is that reasonable? And to be able to then, in turn, listen to them. And if they say no, let’s go back in and double-check where something has gone. Because sometimes, one thing gets coded in one area, and then all the others do, which may have needed to be corrected. So, I bring that human element in and hear the clients, what they’re saying, and where they need to go. That runs in so many different aspects of our conversations with our clients. And I know that I have an accountant; I don’t do tax, as we discussed. I have a tax accountant. I’ve had a tax accountant for 20 years. And you know what, you can’t use technology at all. He is the best tax accountant you can imagine. He gets me in every time pivot; how do I do this with all thumbs and everything? You know what? He talks to me; he talks to me for 90 minutes every time I go in there, and I have these extraordinary conversations that always take my business to another level. Because he’s ahead of the curve, he was behind the curve, and he’s all about the conversation. And I am excited that many technologies are coming along and saying we will automate all of this. Are you OK with that? Because that gives me more time to have conversations, and I know some businesses are going, we’re just going to get the micro business. We’re just going to get those small businesses. And we will automate the whole thing and remove humans from that process altogether. And that’s completely fun. There are lots and lots of little things happening there. But when you’ve got those bigger businesses involved who want that human interaction, you’ve got that opportunity to do something special with them, augment, enhance, and amplify that human input into that relationship.

Roman Villard

What I love about that is that you’re hitting on advisory. So, there needs to be more debate about what CAS is and what client advisory services are. The definition is beside the point. However, the industry, by far and large, thinks of CAS services as something that happens after the accounting process. Here’s the deliverable, here’s a forecast, here’s a report, and it’s more deliverable, depending on the type of relationship with your client. And what I think you’re hitting on here that aligns with how I view CAS is that you can have an advisory relationship at the transactional level that helps you advise the business better, understand the company to advise them in ways that perhaps those automated processes for those micro-businesses that you’re talking about can’t do.

Heather Smith

Yeah, absolutely. So, to bring you back, people in the USA were conversing about CAS; the rest of the world is calling it advisory. And absolutely what we had been doing. So when I started in the industry, and we were on desktops, it would take 18 months to get a set of accounts together; it was such a slow process, and you just accepted that as possible. So they’re all we could focus on as a small business accountant, which was that sort of compliance and old time of getting any data together, and it was useless. Now we’re in a position where the tax work or that sort of work reflects backward. And the advisory work reflects forwards and has those conversation pieces around what’s happening. And I also think that it’s fascinating that if we keep being told, we should have more time in the practice, which I hope people are working at least to do that through four-day workweeks or ending early or something like that, or moving on D clients because someone wants your D clients. I also spend more time thinking about having conversations with clients one-on-one and looking at the macro insights, which, as accountants, we can bring to them. So I know that Xero in the US brings out a small State of Small Business Report, which they publish in the UK and Australia. It’s delicious. There’s so much great information there; you can run through it. And I’m sure other accounting solutions bring it out. I’m just familiar with that one. But you can run through it, and you go, OK, this is relevant for this business; how about I have a conversation with them about that and spend some time running through that at a macro level because the small business owners aren’t necessarily doing that because they’ve got better boots to make or cafes to run or hotels to operate. And they’re hoping that they’re going to get that from you. They’re thinking they’re getting that from you.

Roman Villard

And so one of the things you’ve hit on is how some of this automation may cherry-pick some of this lower level activity that allows us more time to spend with the client to strategize with them and advise them. Let’s shift to client experience because, ideally, that scenario will enable us to provide the client with a better experience. Where do you start in terms of talking to firm owners? OK, now that this settlement is complete, your business is automated. Let’s shift that time over to advisory strategy and client experience. Where do you start that conversation? When do you have that with folks running firms?

Heather Smith

OK, I want to start with a conversation about how you want me to communicate with you. And these are the various ways I can communicate with you. And how do you want me to communicate with you? So I went around in circles saying that because sometimes the client doesn’t know, but sometimes they do. You can automate the questioning with automation such as contact forms. But you then receive information that they prefer to have an online meeting with you, they like to receive a video from you, and they want you to provide it in writing. Now, further down there, they’ve highlighted to you that they have ADHD or they’re neurodivergent. So, as an example, we can get that report, and we can run it through a large language model. And the report that we perhaps have written or generated for them put it into a format that is suitable for someone who is neurodivergent, which means it’s spaced out, which means it’s bullet-pointed, which means there are a lot fewer words in there, and things are highlighted in there. And I love how you. Then I’m customizing it for the human, but a lot of that I can automate to bring to the human. We can get additional AI tools in. Even though we’re humanizing the situation, there’s a solution called, Hey, Jen, and I can actually, there are solutions that will read your financial statements and make a human voice report on it; I can make a human voice report on it, I can use a solution like, Hey, Jen, to translate that into another language. So they speak English, but it’s their second language. However, they speak Spanish; it’s quick and easy to do, and you give it to them in Spanish or whatever language, maybe French. And they know you don’t speak it; some things will be scattered. But you’re trying to bring it to them at their level and what they need. That way. So I’ve given you lots of different options there. And you could manually do them all. But you can automate much of that once you’re clear on it.

Roman Villard

Oh, boy, there’s a lot to dig into there. What I love about what you characterize is that you can create a specific set of processes with defined tools and have parameters for delivering advisory financials and information to your client. Now, within the context of how you set up that process, there are a variety of means and tools you can utilize to accomplish that. But it’s more important to understand how to meet the client, where they’re at, how they best learn how they best digest information, what format would be most conducive to a relationship with them, and then take that input and format it in a way that makes sense to your point? There’s ChatGPT; I use 11 labs for voice changing and transcribing and things like that. In today’s age, let me highlight that it is a security measure, or should be, to ensure that you’re safeguarding all of your client data. To understand how, why, and where that data is being used before throwing it into a large language model.

There are many ways to accomplish that. Once you have that information, you understand how a client wants to be communicated with and how they best learn and operate. What’s the next step in that relationship? Is it just recreating that format every single month?

Heather Smith

It will be having human conversations with them and being available for human conversations. And, yes, repeating that regularly. But making sure that humans are humans will sometimes get them involved. And sometimes they’ll ghost you, which is the common term. And that’s just because their life is getting busy. And the next level of that advisory pieces, you say, OK, this is, I never want to decide for a client, never choose for a client, but I will put the information in front of them. If they’re not making decisions that make sense to them, I might have that. Contact them directly about what it is and say, Look, are you sure about this? Can we double-check that? But it’s not overwhelming them with the information, creating the bespoke information, and trying to make yourself available for conversations. That can be challenging, but we’ve got them. I’ve assumed we’ve got them signed up for an ongoing subscription. So they’re paying us for it, and we want to encourage them. They get so much more out of having a one-on-one human meeting. But they’re only sometimes, and I don’t know why. But we’ve discussed why they’re only sometimes prepared to do that.

Roman Villard

So I like the idea of my clients feeling like I’m always available, I’m always here to answer an email, and that the team will be responsive within an hour of receiving an email. The fact is, that’s only possible for some clients. We would be setting ourselves up for failure if we had this open communication policy and needed to instill guidelines and frameworks for communicating with clients. Do you have specific recommendations on how to best accomplish that, given the understanding of how we now know clients like to be communicated with and receive information? What does that next step look like? What are the parameter meeting times and the number of outreach responses? Is there technology to help with that? I need help.

Heather Smith

It starts at the beginning of the engagement letter, and explaining the engagement in terms of boundaries is very important. And, of course, some businesses don’t work the nine to five, and they’re available at different times. But then you need to understand, are you prepared to do that? Or is that? Are there? What do you call it surcharges? Like the Uber surcharge? Are you charging extra for that? I went to Brooklyn Uber the other day, and it was slow; it was about 30 seconds too slow, and the price doubled. But I still had to pay for it like so. So that is involved in terms of if you’re submitting information late, then you need to meet your part of the arrangement. But very much in the engagement letter. Some of our contractors require this information. However, I will specify them by date and be available within these timeframes. And outside of that, how are you navigating it? Do you have an offshore team that can work around the clock, or do you have extra charges? Boundaries, so you’re prepared to pay your Uber surcharge. So put in extra costs around that and don’t burn out. We don’t want to burn out. And I wonder, Roman if Financial Cents has solutions for that boundary element.

Roman Villard

Interestingly, everybody approaches it slightly differently from our experience with Financial Cents within the context of a workflow management system. We meticulously control outbound communications to clients; we don’t want them inundated with requests on a daily or weekly basis; we want it to be very controlled, and we can control that element. The challenges outside our workflow management system, within the realm of one-off requests, are as follows: Hey, can you rush my financials this month? Hey, I’ve got a big project that came up; hey, can you answer these questions and update the model? It is not easy to understand how to handle those one-off requests if I need to be more granular in the scoping and engagement processes. And that can be a tremendous time suck within the realm of a subscription.

Heather Smith

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s a constant learning curve.

Roman Villard

It is it is. What are your thoughts on chatbots? And automated tools to help with one-off requests that come through, and people chat with a bot?

Heather Smith

It makes much sense to have a ring fence where chatbots can handle the data or information securely and work on providing those simple human responses where relevant. If that takes off that easy level, it needs something to use. I’m thrilled to use those when I go on sites. That’s the first and next levels; I can access a human if I’m not getting the responses.

Roman Villard

What’s been interesting to me is that over the last 12, maybe 18 months, I’ve observed with the vendors and the technology partners that we use that they’ve all instilled intercom or some tool that will help search a database and internal database that they have on any q&a. And so I can pull up, pop up in the chat box and ask a question, and then usually get that question answered via something that they’ve already published. If it can’t, then I can directly connect to a human. I’d like to know to what degree accounting firms should have something like that to enable quicker responses and take that top tier off. Is there anything in the market that you’ve observed that is helpful like that?

Heather Smith

One of the things that I would do is educate the clients on where to find support from the software they’re using and how to access it. They’re using many cases, and we know the answer as accountants. But when they have a problem with how to do something in QuickBooks or Xero, empower them to find the answer themselves. What’s it to teach someone to fish? Don’t fish for them, and don’t give them the fish. I empower them that way. And again, I hear many stories that dealing with your tax office is challenging, as is dealing with our tax office. And to those higher-level complex things. That’s when the humans become involved.

Roman Villard

Yeah, it isn’t easy to understand how to manage those things best. I had a client request several weeks ago. Can you send me the trailing 12-month financials? You could log into QuickBooks and do this yourself. I facilitated the request, and I then created a relationship with my client that is a one-off request; I’ll answer anytime. That’s not the type of response that may be appropriate. And what you’re recommending, and I think I need to do this myself, but also, let’s create a framework of how to how to self serve and how to answer your questions that may also result in you being able to have a more expedited response, because you know how to accomplish this thing. And it helps educate our clients too.

Heather Smith

Absolutely. And with that question and query, I would have done two things. The first one is to respond using a looming video, which shows them how to do it, doesn’t do it for them, shows them how to do it. The second one is to create a generic loom video that is now part of your information source, that might even go up as a blog post, that might even go out in the following newsletter to inform people how to do it because you’ve sort of just constantly My thoughts are put continuously that push that education out to the client base. And if that one person wants it, 5% of your clients would benefit from it. You can also send out a monthly newsletter via email. That interests them, but also sitting there as, Oh, this is how I searched for it. I hadn’t even thought of that. But I’m just going to be useful for me.

Roman Villard

That’s a great way to take common questions you receive and create an asset. Yeah, yeah. Well, think like that. Because most accounts, if they do have a newsletter, are feverishly typing the day before the newsletter is supposed to go out. There needs to be an existing bank of opportunity to pull from into creating content in a newsletter.

Heather Smith

Absolutely. That is how I started my YouTube channel. People would ask me questions, so I created a video. And my channel has got, like, 11,000 subscribers now. And I earn money from people viewing how-to videos, and people still see people going. Oh, that video I made ten years ago; they share it with the community when people ask that question. I am so putting it out there. The other thing about putting it up online is that people now know your voice. They now see how you talk. They now see how you respond to people. And if they’re feeling, oh, I’m going to be a silly person. I feel comfortable talking to these people; I have a warm relationship with that person. And I feel more engaged about going and becoming a client of that person. It is almost edutainment and advertising in an educational way.

Roman Villard

Yeah, and I can 100% agree with that from the content that I’ve published online. Giving yourself a voice and a platform that others can self-select enables far more comfort in discussing sales because somebody knows how you talk. They see how you think. This then moves into the client experience much smoother than when they had come in completely cold from the beginning.

Heather Smith

Absolutely. You and I have a very distinct brand regarding our personalities. And that will resonate with people. And that’s great because it makes them feel comfortable. I’ve had ladies ring me up and say, Can you come and help me? I’m going to breastfeed during the session. Are you OK with that? Of course, I’m OK with it. Because I’m OK with it, but you can understand that not everyone would be, and I completely understand. So, the brand personality resonates with people, and everyone will not like you. That’s OK. There are plenty of people out there who need help, and we’re all we’re all running at capacities. So it’s OK to attract the people you will work well with and understand how you work.

Roman Villard

I love it. We should distill this conversation into the top three things to consider when personalizing client experiences. The first is understanding how clients learn and prefer to engage with information. What are the other two things you’d recommend?

Heather Smith

Be as human as you possibly can while having boundaries in place by having really strict boundaries in place. Every time you see the boundaries breaking down, work out ways how you can automate that, so I want to use as much technology as possible while still being able to peep over that and being the most human person possible. And this isn’t another one, but this is just the tip to the newsletter. I think Laurel and Wilson. She creates a newsletter that helps you generate your newsletter if you need to. Still, I always tell people to sign up for my accounting, excuse me, my accounting Apps newsletter because it has lots of content you can grab and repurpose in your newsletter.

Roman Villard

I love that. And it’s at the end of the day. It’s a delightful blend of utilizing technology well and efficiently while also retaining a high degree of personal human touch to reach people where they’re at. Beautiful. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, Heather, I love this conversation. We could go on for another hour, but you also have much going on. There are many ways that people can find you, such as by consuming the content you create. What are the best mediums for people to find you?

Heather Smith

Please connect with me on LinkedIn, Heather Smith. I have this accounting Apps newsletter, which I’m very excited about; I stumbled across it. I stumbled across the platform several years ago. And what it does is it uses it to pull in all the blog posts across the world about accounting technology. So, I review 700 blog posts and then curate that down to about 70. It then sends you, the subscriber, a bespoke 15-post newsletter based on what you clicked on in the past, and it generates this newsletter that is relevant to you. And every newsletter is different. So, it brings this smoothness and customer experience into the newsletter. Um, I have a high open rate on that newsletter. It’s called the very simple Accounting Apps newsletter. And it’s news about accounting technology from around the world. So So that’s very exciting. And, of course, you’re welcome to join my accounting apps community and listen to the podcast.

Roman Villard

Perfect. Well, many people will be looking for you after this. I appreciate your time and conversation today.

Heather Smith

Thank you so much. It’s been so much fun to be on the show with you. Thank you to Financial Cents and yourself for inviting me.

Roman Villard

Absolutely. Thank you for listening to this podcast today. If you enjoyed it, remember to share and write a review. It will help other firm owners like you find our podcast and get insights into how to grow their firms. Stay tuned.