How technology will shape client relationships
4th July, 2017
You know how you only really hear from clients when they want something? Well, that’s about to change.
One of the findings of MYOB’s Radar Report, which examines the megatrends set to affect business in the near future, is that technology will allow practices to become more proactive in their approach to clients.
“In most cases today, the client drives interactions between themselves and their business advisors,” the report reads.
Things like a client wanting to get their tax sorted or making a mistake in their books will prompt a call to their accountant or bookkeeper.
However, technology will enable practices to become proactive players in the health of their clients’ business.
“At some point, there will be a shift whereby technology will alert the business advisor ahead of time to engage with their client proactively,” the report states.
While traditionally practices haven’t needed to be proactive in order to keep their own businesses ticking over, technology will allow them to take on a much more advisory role with their clients: and they’ll need to.
Millennials and the two-way conversation
The ability to show value in the service practices provide will become vital as more “millennial” (those born between 1980-2000) start businesses and engage professional services.
This generation is perfectly comfortable asking questions about what value practices bring them, and what values the practices hold.
Millennials feel empowered to ask questions and demand more, and this has been driven at least in part by technology.
We can now track our pizza order by GPS, stream movies instantly or apply for a loan and receive approval straight away.
It means that practices will need to work hard to prove that they can help, and setting meeting for three weeks’ time will no longer be acceptable in a world where everything is provided immediately.
Technology will also automate the small stuff, which means practices will increasingly find value within the business advisory space.
After all, millennials also think that they can take care of the ‘small stuff’ like transactional processing.
This feeling of empowerment will provide an opportunity for practices, but only with the right insights.