Tax season is over now what? Calling all tax firms and accountants. Eliminate burnout before next year with this free blueprint!
Be willing to change your work structure, approach, workforce management and annual schedule, specifically:
Segment your customers: easier filings into more difficult filings. Or simple W2s to those that are business owners to those that are complex, etc. But essentially take time to bucket your customers.
Once you have bucketed your customers create a time frame and work schedule based on this. Specifically, come up with a schedule (date range or days) when your team or what parts of your team will handle which bucket of customers. Thus, your clients will have a limited selection of dates and times to choose from to make their appointments. For those that miss their appointments it can go to another client. And the client that missed the appointment will have two options (1) hope someone misses their appointment or there is another opening (2) automatically have to file for an extension and pay extra and schedule their appointment for a time during a date range after April 15. Then no one is scrambling or having to work late or miss family events.
Staff your team according to these customer buckets based on strengths and interest (while still allowing the opportunity for those who want to gain new skills to train and learn). This will also make it easier to see where you need to hire if you decide to hire. For example, you may have some team members that genuinely prefer working with clients with businesses or who are in real estate or clients with alot of investments or clients that just have W2s
See how to leverage an online secure platform for clients for loading their documents and you can send messages with them and that helps you all stay organized.
What this overall approach does and allows for is:
set work hours for your team so you all can have lives again and enjoy coming to work all year round. And leave work at work.
your customers will now have cutoff dates if they want to get their documentation in before April 15th. so the date ranges will likely start Feb 1 (or earlier for those who have all their paperwork in January) through April 14. Monday through Friday.
And based on the customer segments the customers will have specific date ranges to make their appointment. If they miss it then they automatically have to file an extension and then get moved to an appointment in a new date range like perhaps June through August still based on customer segments (since you all may want reduced hours for a bit April 15 through May 15 as a treat to the team).
An important thing with this is proper and effective implementation and communication. Which includes having a customer service script for this new approach and a few staff members dedicated to communicating this new approach moving forward to all existing customers. And then all new customers are automatically onboarded to the new structure.
Having a dedicated administrative personnel dedicated to workforce management and client management would be worth hiring for this to keep everyone organized and who will/can naturally stay on top of changes as they arise. And who will manage the online calendar that clients and staff see. And this online calendar is where customers can go to make their appointments/ reschedule based on availability or get pushed to the extension group.
Also make sure work hours (9-5, 8-5, 9-7pm, etc.) include the time you need to do work in between clients. So the schedule should not be jammed with back to back clients for your team so they are not doing work after work.
If you need support creating and implementing this, we offer this service. Email us at info@officialgmta.com.