Playbook, accounting firm
Routing an accountancy complaint without conceding anything
Complaints at a practice divide into two, and the division decides the handling. One is about service: nobody replied, the bill arrived without warning, the same information was asked for three times. The other says the practice's work caused a loss, usually a penalty or an interest charge, and that is a claim rather than a complaint, whatever the client called it.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for complaints holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- A complaint naming a penalty is asserting that the practice caused a financial loss, which puts it in a different category on the day it arrives and makes any sympathetic sentence about the deadline a liability.
- The deadline belonged to the client even where the practice was preparing the filing, which is true and also the last thing to say to somebody who has just opened a notice, so this pair is about routing rather than about explaining.
- A practice is usually a member of a professional body with its own complaints route, so the material has to keep the internal procedure and the external one apart without inviting anybody to the second before the first has run.
- The complainant is very often still a client with work in progress and a filing ahead of them, so the reply is speaking into a continuing relationship rather than to somebody already on their way out.
How it arrives
- i want to complain about my accountant
- nobody has replied to me for two weeks
- you missed my deadline and i have a penalty
- who do i complain to about an accountancy firm
- can i have a copy of your complaints procedure
- i was charged for work i never asked for
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Your written complaints procedure, with stages and timescales | Who receives a complaint, how quickly it is acknowledged, who investigates and who signs the response. Publish the version you would hand to a client who asked for it at the desk, because this one gets asked for. |
|---|---|
| The route for anything alleging a loss | Which principal it reaches and how fast. A message mentioning a penalty, an interest charge or a missed filing should not sit in a general inbox overnight, and the assistant needs an address that reflects that. |
| The external route, and when it becomes available | The body a client may go to and at what point in your own procedure. Set it out accurately and after the internal stage, since a client sent there first is one you never got the chance to answer. |
| What the practice will and will not discuss by message | The line between acknowledging a complaint and discussing the work behind it. Written down, this is what stops a well meant reply becoming the first document in a file about you. |
The reply
I am sorry, and I would rather get this to the right person than answer it myself. Our complaints procedure sets out who looks at it, how quickly it is acknowledged and what happens next [1]. Where a penalty or a charge is involved it goes to a principal rather than into the general queue [2]. I am not able to see your file or comment on what happened. Leave me your name, an email and a short account of it and I will pass it straight over today.
It apologises for the experience without accepting anything about the work, which is the whole balance in this pair. Naming the procedure shows the client there is one. Saying the penalty route is faster is both true and the reassurance that stops somebody escalating on the spot, and nothing in it characterises the filing.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any message using the word complaint, any mention of a penalty, an interest charge or a missed filing, and any reference to a professional body or an adviser.
I am not the right place for this, and I do not want to give you an answer that turns out to be wrong. Leave me your name, an email and what has happened, and it goes to the person who handles complaints today.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never agree that the practice missed a deadline, filed late or made an error.
- Never explain to a complainant that a deadline was their own responsibility, whether or not that is correct.
- Never estimate whether a penalty can be appealed or what it might come to.
- Never point a client at a professional body before the practice's own procedure has run.
Questions
- Should it apologise at all?
- For the experience, yes, and in the first line. Apologising for the frustration is not an admission about the work, and a complaint that meets a defensive opening sentence hardens immediately.
- Can it tell somebody where their complaint has got to?
- No. It cannot see a case, a file or an inbox. It can restate the timescales in your procedure and take another message, which is usually what somebody chasing actually wants.
- Do we need a separate route for penalty messages?
- Yes, and a real one. The cost of that message waiting three days is not the client, it is how hard the client's version of events has set by the time you reply to it.
Keep reading
- Everything for a accounting firmDeadlines drive the volume. What an accountancy practice can automate, and why no answer may touch a caller's own numbers.
- Handling complaints in generalThe job is to route, not to resolve. Acknowledge without conceding, name the escalation route, and get it to a person fast.
- Adjustments a practice can make, and the one it cannotPaper accounts, a wet signature, a family member helping, and where an adjustment collides with the identity checks.
- When the security questionnaire is about somebody else's financial dataAssurance questions arriving from a client's own auditor or biggest customer, and why the assistant may only point at what is published.
- The monthly payment failed and nobody noticed until it matteredWhy a bounced monthly payment matters more near a filing date, and the confusion between paying the practice and paying the authority.
Try it on your own material
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