OUR CLIENTS
Exceptional service has always been important to our clients - and delivering it is our number one priority.
In a downturn, it matters even more. Clients are even more value conscious. They need expert, proactive support, and they're less likely to be tolerant of errors or lapses in service.
More companies are looking around for a better deal. Rightly so, in our view. As more and more clients are discovering, we can deliver breadth and depth of expertise to the highest standards - with senior-led teams delivering service quality and value. An unrivalled commitment where we aim to consistently offer the highest level of service. As a result, we've been winning the majority of our pitches - attracting new clients in our target mid and larger corporate markets while retaining our own clients. In fact, our own clients have proved exceptionally loyal.
With good reason. In recent years we've invested in quality resources and expertise considerably. Our 'one firm, clients first' strategy means what it says: the whole organisation is dedicated to exceptional service delivery that makes every client know and feel they're special to us. We aim to give our clients more senior time than competitors - and we're well placed to do this because we have a high proportion of partners relative to staff. We train and empower all our people to deliver proactive, personal and accessible service that's unhampered by bureaucracy or superfluous process.
We empower our people to deliver exceptional client serviceand we give them the service skills they need through continuing investment in training programmes for both client facing and non-client facing staff.
Just to be sure, we've also upgraded our Pulse employee research to ask all our people whether they feel they're getting the support and training they need to deliver exceptional service.
WE LISTEN
Our long-established Client Listening Programme (see What our clients think) gives us independently-researched feedback on client satisfaction. We're now sharing its findings more widely across the firm and with clients to stimulate further service enhancement.
We seek regular formal and informal client feedback to guide constant service improvement.
We're sharing debriefs with a wider range of colleagues after client meetings. This goes right to the top: our Leadership Team is now actively involved in debriefs after pitches and engagements.
We've been buying more independent research to understand what clients want from us - including a major programme of in-depth interviews with clients and prospects by Lighthouse Research.
We're also encouraging all our people to spend more time with their clients: there's simply no substitute for face time.
WE RESPOND TO WHAT WE HEAR
Arguably, clients need our support even more in bad times than in good. So we're rising to the challenge: putting greater effort than ever into understanding what's going on in their sector, bringing them ideas, showing initiative. Above all, making our firm more commercially aware than ever. That's part of delivering value.
In a more regulated world, the role of accountants is changing. Clients want us to stay one step ahead so we can advise and guide them through emerging regulatory requirements such as Solvency II (Download from: www.bdo.uk.com/bdo/live/publications/solvency-ii/Solvency_II.pdf. They want us to be thought leaders with informed views about their future.
To come forward with ideas more proactively, we're becoming more joined-up as 'one firm'. For example, we think the audit could do more to help clients anticipate and head-off problems: rather than just qualifying their accounts or raising going concern issues, wouldn't it make more sense for auditors to work with colleagues in Corporate Finance or Business Restructuring or Tax to propose a solution?
By the same token, we're realistic about fees. We won't necessarily be the cheapest in a pitch, but in independent research we are amongst the leaders on 'value for money'.
As clients' interests have become more international, so have ours. We continue to strengthen our relationships across BDO International, the world's fifth largest accountancy network. Because we recognise that it's not just having colleagues in the right places that matters; it's how effectively you can work with them.
WE CONTINUE TO MAKE OURSELVES MORE CLIENT CENTRED
The tone is set at the top. Our Leadership Team members have client responsibilities themselves; and we've cut back on superfluous internal processes to give all our partners and staff more time to spend out in the marketplace.
We've extended our Client Listening Programme (see Our sector teams) to help us understand our clients even better; and we've improved our knowledge sharing so we have more commercial insight and information to bring them.
It's all part of a joined-up 'one firm' approach, helping every client to feel they're supported by the whole organisation, not just an individual partner.
WE'RE STILL INVESTING TO SERVE CLIENTS BETTER
We've continued to invest in developing the resources our clients need. In the past year we've opened a new Corporate Finance and Advisory arm in Dubai to work with local and international businesses and institutional investors in the Middle East, as well as helping UK businesses who want to develop interests in the Middle East. It quickly demonstrated its value, winning our largest-ever corporate finance deal within a week of opening.
We've also been giving strategic advice and investment to the BDO International network's new Member Firm in India. This is an increasingly important marketplace for many of our UK-based clients and a growing source of inward investment to the UK; companies doing business in either direction will benefit from our strengthened resources there.
Within the UK we've invested in expanding our Public Sector team; and continuing investment in outsourcing from our service centre in Reading is enabling more clients to transfer their back office financial functions to us.
AND CLIENTS ARE NOTICING THE DIFFERENCE
BDO is a trusted credible alternative to the largest firms. That's why we've continued to gain new clients, at a time when our competitors are working harder than ever to attract and retain business. Clients are recognising that we offer the breadth and depth of resource they require, in the UK and world-wide, with outstanding service and value.
With in our Client Listening Programme (see What our clients think) proportion of clients awarding us nine or 10 for overall satisfaction showed a further increase. This is reflected in our client attrition rate, which has remained low despite the pressures on companies to shop around. More than four out of five clients say they'd definitely recommend us, and almost half have of those already done so.
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE?
Clients tell us it depends above all on these six factors:
- Empowered, qualified people
- Personal relationships
- Open contracting
- Demonstrable quality
- Valuable ideas
- 'Open all hours' mind-set
Video transcript: www.bdoannualreport.co.uk/accessible/default.aspx?c=3&s=3&u=3
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
What we've seen is our clients looking for different things from us as an organisation over the last year or so, so they've been focussing maybe more on costs than growth. They've been focussing on financing rather than infrastructure. They've been focussing more on getting closer to their clients rather than transactional activity, the kind of things we would have experienced more so in a benign market place.
Technology is playing a bigger part in the way we do business and in everything we do, from the social media we use to engage with the graduate population, through to client portals that we run for many of our clients both domestically and internationally. And one thing that our clients have needed during the more challenging economic times are advisers that are available to them, accessible; advisers they have relationships with whereby they can share what's on their mind, share some of their problems; and where we can work together to come up with the kind of solutions that really make a difference in their businesses.
Personal relationships are at the heart of everything that we do and as a business we put an extra effort it to developing those strong personal relationships over a period of time.
And the big deal for us is to have clients who are in a position where they feel so strongly about the relationship that we've got with them that they'd be prepared to definitely recommend us in the market place. And one of the fantastic things that we've had, as a result of our overt focus on clients over the last year or so, is the level of clients that are definitely recommending us has gone up significantly.
- Empowered, qualified people
- Personal relationships
- Open contracting
- Demonstrable quality
- Valuable ideas
- 'Open all hours' mind-set