How to use technology to recruit young accountants and earn client trust

“First, you have to understand how people connect and how you build trust with clients,” Dr Kerr says.

Most importantly, it must be understood that what clients most want from an accounting business is a trusted relationship. Technology can help with that, but not in the way you might expect.

Can technology enhance trust?

So, in a period in which less meetings are taken in-person and more people work remotely, how can technology help build that relationship?

“Technology helps us build what is called swift trust, which is built quickly but, therefore, is also very brittle. It breaks quickly as it is not very robust, relying on much less information exchange than live engagement, which turns on more of our brain,” Dr Kerr says.

“Face-to-face, in-person meetings are still your best value proposition. Clients really do want to come in to see you, especially if things are going really well for them, or if things are going badly for them. Both are heightened emotional states, which they want to share face-to-face.”

During in-person meetings a powerful series of electro-chemical reactions occur in the bodies and brains of those in the meeting. These reactions build a strong foundation in each person’s brain for the relationship to be built upon, and they simply don’t occur during video calls.

“We are beautifully built to send and receive huge amounts of information that build trust and loyalty, and increase your radar for relevant information – all through these invisible but powerful connections,” Dr Kerr says.

But accountants who use technology wisely do so particularly to enhance the bonds formed during in-person meetings. Ensuring relevant information is immediately available and presented in meaningful, easily-digestible formats, for example, and giving your client agency in the process – will boost trust.

Tech is also about your team

“You also need to have a clear picture of how you build synchrony with your team, particularly the impacts of technology on your team and on the business,” Dr Kerr says.

A classic mistake businesses make is to focus on what the technology is capable of doing, then shoe-horning those capabilities into the business, rather than first analysing the problem that needs to be solved within the business.

“Technology choice and implementation must always be the second step – start with the opportunity available or problem to solve,” Dr Kerr says. “Then you move on to asking whether AI, or any other technology, can play a part in the solution and, if so, what that is.”

“I love good tech and am lucky enough to work with some amazing tech solutions, but I’m fed up with people using the wrong tech for the wrong reasons.”

Small businesses and small practices in particular should be using technology primarily to build trust, free up staff from repetitive and low-value work, and ensure people have relevant information at their fingertips whenever they need it, all of which the right technology does very effectively.

And don’t get caught in the trap of thinking young people desperately want to work in a business that boasts whiz-bang tech, Dr Kerr says.

“The latest research on what attracts young, capable people to accounting businesses, especially the smaller businesses, is the opportunity to add value for people, to help people navigate their finances, gain control and save money. And really, that’s it,” she explains.

“Young people often target small accounting firms and score higher on contentment due to factors such as more close-knit environments, more personal management and mentoring, and the ability to grow a broader skill set because they’re not siloed. They also get a lot more client interaction and can be more entrepreneurial. There’s also data around many younger people distrusting larger corporates.”

Technology has a role to play in facilitating more opportunities for young accountants to experience the benefits of a small firm, and in streamlining some of the tasks that distract from those aspects.

“Young people say technology allows people to be face-to-face and do the data integration AI can’t do,” Dr Kerr says. “So young people flip it around and say automation is great because it delivers data to clients when they require it, enabling them to do the value-add as a human.”

Satisfying other client desires

As well as trusted relationships, on the practical side clients want business planning advice. They want that advice to come from somebody who can demonstrate that they are deeply familiar with their businesses.

That’s where technology is very useful, Dr Kerr says.

“It gives you the data and lets you see trends, and it can be used to help build and back up the advice an accountant is offering when they are talking to their client,” she says.

Technology can release staff from tedious work, enabling them to do more of what the client wants and expects. This also happens to be much more engaging work.

The basics

“Accounting businesses need to automate their data entry,” Dr Kerr says. “They need to get their head around cloud-based accounting solutions, meaning all relevant staff members can see what they need to see, no matter where they are. This entails ensuring system security is adequate, and that people know and actually follow the rules to ensure security is maintained.”

Finally, Dr Kerr says, ensure ongoing staff training to educate everybody around how to get the most out of the technology to do their jobs better.

“Accounting businesses should never let technology get in their way,” Dr Kerr says. “It should simply be designed and used to do the things that are important to the business – build trust, remove low-value work and enable staff to do their jobs better.”

She also warns, however, against building a business model around over-reliance on AI tools or without considering the collaboration and risk assessment that is required to use AI tools at their highest value.

“Don’t be fooled into thinking accountancy can be virtualised. It can’t. Technology cannot do your job. The future is very much about building relationships, knowing the client’s situation and providing useful, tailored advice face-to-face, which maintains the trusted relationship that ensures client loyalty. No matter how impressive the tech, ultimately it is still about human connection,” she says.

“Get your head around tech for having good, clean data in the right place, in the right way, and automated to take the drudgery away. But don’t forget to put in place preventative maintenance, network support and disaster recovery – all key to good use of tech.”