Playbook, accounting firm
The arrival question at a practice is usually about carrying something
A client coming to a practice is rarely arriving empty handed. They have a box, a wallet of receipts or a folder of statements, and the question behind where are you is whether they can stop outside long enough to carry it in. That is a different arrival problem from somebody walking into a shop, and hardly any practice has written the answer down.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for location and parking holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The visit usually involves physically handing over records, so the useful facts are where a car can stop for five minutes, whether there is a lift and which floor you are on, rather than the postcode.
- Many practices sit on an upper floor of a building shared with other businesses, behind a single entry system with no sign at street level, which makes the reception desk downstairs part of the directions.
- Clients ask whether they can post original documents instead, and the answer has to cover what the practice does with anything left in a shared lobby or pushed through a door out of hours.
- A business park practice has parking and clients who cannot easily get there, a town centre practice has neither, so the arrival answer here is really about how the records travel rather than how the person does.
How it arrives
- where do i park to drop my paperwork off
- can i post my records to you instead
- which floor are you on
- is there somewhere i can leave a box if you are shut
- can i drop things off without an appointment
- how do i get in there is no sign outside
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The last part of the journey, described for somebody standing outside | Which building, which entrance, whether there is a desk downstairs and which buzzer. Write it for a person holding a box in the rain rather than as a line on a map. |
|---|---|
| Where a car can actually stop | The nearest parking, the time limit on it, and whether there is anywhere to pull in briefly to unload. The five minute question is the one being asked and it is never the one answered. |
| Your position on posting and on dropping off | Whether originals may be posted, what you recommend for anything that cannot be replaced, whether a package can be left at a shared reception, and whether anybody signs for it. |
| Out of hours delivery, and what you do not accept | Whether there is a letterbox, whether anything left in a lobby is secure, and what a client should do instead. Saying plainly that a box should not be left is better than finding out one was. |
The reply
We are on the floor listed on our contact page, and the way in is through the shared reception at street level where the desk will point you up [1]. There is no parking at the building itself; the nearest is on that page with its time limit, and you can stop briefly outside to unload. If you would rather not carry a box across town, the same page covers what can be posted and what we ask you not to send [2]. I cannot arrange a drop off, so leave me your name and an email and somebody will confirm one.
It answers the unloading question rather than the address question, because that is what somebody with a year of paperwork is asking. Naming the shared reception saves the call from the lobby. Posting is offered as a real alternative rather than as a deflection, and nothing commits the practice to receiving anything at a particular moment.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor wants to arrange a specific drop off, asks whether originals can be left somewhere, or is outside the building and cannot get in.
Arranging a drop off, or leaving anything with somebody, has to be agreed with the office rather than here. Leave me your name, an email and roughly when you want to come, and they will confirm it.
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 say records can be left at a shared reception or in a lobby unless your own material says that is accepted.
- Never say parking is free without naming the time limit in the same sentence.
- Never promise a package will be signed for, since that depends on who is at the desk.
- Never give directions to an office or a floor the material does not cover.
Questions
- Is this really worth a page?
- It removes the call that begins with somebody standing in a lobby holding a box, which happens more often than any practice admits. It also stops originals being posted when you would rather have seen copies.
- Can it tell a client whether a package arrived?
- No. It cannot look anything up or see the post. It can describe your process and take a message so somebody checks, which is the only honest version of that answer.
- What if we would rather everything came in digitally?
- Say so on the same page, with what to do about the documents that only exist on paper. The clients asking about parking are usually the ones who have not gone digital and need telling how.
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 location and parking in generalWhich entrance, where to park, the step free route, the nearest stop. Genuinely useful information that is almost never written down well.
- Routing an accountancy complaint without conceding anythingSorting a service complaint from a claim about the work, and why nothing may concede whose deadline was missed.
- 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.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.