Firms should be reevaluating their clients on an ongoing basis to ensure that they are providing top quality service to an appropriate client base. Use of the client continuance tool can lead to opportunities to provide additional services to current clients and services to new clients, by freeing up time from clients and services that do not align with the firm’s values and goals.
Using a pre-set list of key indicators regarding client relationships, firms can use the client continuance tool to rate different areas such as:
Complexity,
Productivity,
Life cycle and
Timeliness of payments.
Each key indicator above is associated with a number of 1-5, with 5 being the highest number correlated with maintaining the client relationship. Based on the total score, there are parameters in place that should be used to determine if a client should be kept or not. There is an additional space to document thoughts on possible ways to serve clients in a different capacity. For example, if a current audit client is not a good candidate for continuance, the firm may believe they can have a successful relationship providing consulting services to the client.
Additionally, there is a second tab that gives definitions of some of the terms used on the main tool. Use this tab to dig into more understanding of how to use this tool to its highest capacity.