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BGL hits over 7,100 followers on LinkedIn!

By BGL Update, HomepageNo Comments

We are excited to share that we recently hit the milestone of 7,100+ followers on LinkedIn! 🥳

Heartfelt thanks to everyone who follows us, likes our posts and shares our content. We really appreciate your love and support and enjoy engaging with you.

The increasing number of ‘Likes’ and comments encourages us to continue to share all things BGL, products and team, and how we help accountants, financial and compliance professionals to save time with our award-winning SMSF, investment portfolio & company compliance management solutions. ❤️

Still not a follower? We’d love it if you joined our LinkedIn family! 🥰

Not sure if you really want to follow BGL on social media? Here are a few reasons why you should follow us! 

  • Stay up-to-date with our latest features, product updates and news
  • Be the first to find out more details about events, conferences and webinars we’re hosting or participating
  • Learn about career opportunities and join our BGL Family – We’re a Great Place to Work certified!
  • And much more! 😉

Always ready to connect

LinkedIn is not the only place where you can find us. We’re also actively engaged with our community on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram! Plus, subscribe to our Youtube channel to access webinars recordings & more!

We hope you join us on any and every one of our social media platforms soon and many thanks again for helping us to become a family of 7,100+ on LinkedIn!

CX Faux Pas – a letter from a friend

By Bec Loves CX, Homepage, IndustryNo Comments

Do you know that friend in your life who’s honest and will tell you when your shirt is horrible and to never wear it again? Or that you have lunch in your teeth and making a fool of yourself? Well, I’m that friend and I’ve written you a letter.

Dear New Friend, 

I have met many people in the past that have tried to engrain CX through their business. I’ve seen some succeed and some commit a total faux pas. I care about you and I’m here to help you avoid being the latter.

Customer Service and CX Confusion: Customer service and client experience are not the same.

  • Zendesk defines customer service as “the act of supporting and advocating for customers in their discovery, use, optimization, and troubleshooting of a product or service.”
  • Whereas their definition for customer experience is “Customer experience (CX) is everything related to a business that affects a customer’s perception and feelings about it.”

Although not the same, it is important to note that they are very much integrated. To succeed in the CX space, you should always strive to provide optimal customer service but that only scratches the surface of CX – Don’t be fooled! Avoid thinking CX has been implemented successfully if you’ve only mastered customer service. 

CX Responsibility: Who is responsible for CX is not up for debate.

You can’t simply give everyone in the company full responsibility for implementing CX and hope it grows organically, it won’t. However, you also can’t give one employee soul responsibility for CX because it is a culture you need to nurture. Culture doesn’t come from one person; everyone needs to be on the same bus and heading in the same direction! It’s a terrifying concept trying to think of how to get everyone on the same page, I know, but once you get momentum there’s no stopping you.

Depending on the size of your business, would recommend appointing someone (or a team) into CX role(s). It’s their responsibility to drive CX strategy and continuous improvement. In addition to this, it’s every single employee’s responsibility to take that strategy and bring it to life. One in, all in and if not, maybe they caught the wrong bus?

Technology: CX isn’t just about having the latest technology.

As an example, BGL implemented Zendesk in 2018 as our core technical support platform and yes, it’s one of the greatest pieces of technology in the support space but it’s not the only reason BGL has one of the best support offerings in our industry. 

Here’s only some of what sets us apart in Technical Support:

  • The Zendesk platform
  • An amazing, knowledgeable, and hungry Support Team
  • Strong backing from leadership and other BGL Teams
  • A Documentation Team that creates invaluable content
  • An Admin Team that acts as your first point of contact
  • Product Teams that push industry-leading software
  • Detailed workflows and processes to set the standard
  • KPI’s and data-driven decisions
  • Culture! 

My point is, it’s great that BGL has Zendesk and it makes CX easier to implement, but we wouldn’t be successful without all the moving parts.

Touchpoints: CX is not just one touchpoint in one part of the company – It's every touchpoint!

Often people make the mistake of thinking CX is most important in their Support Teams or Account Management Teams however, the fact is that it is every single touchpoint your clients have with your business (directly or indirectly).

It’s the greeting they receive at reception, it’s the website look and feel, it’s the webinar you run, it’s even down to the way some random person talks about your business in a forum. EV-ER-Y THING!

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking it matters more in any one space throughout the business! 

 

My friend, I hope that I have guided you in the right direction and in some way helped you to avoid being the person with lunch in their teeth. My final piece of advice, for now, is to not overwhelm yourself with the big picture. Zoom in, break it down bit by bit and adopt this as a lifestyle change. You’ve got this, I know you do.

So, how will you approach CX and avoid the faux pas?

Love, 

Your CX BFF

The Human Touch

By Bec Loves CX, Homepage, IndustryNo Comments

Steve Jobs previously said, “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology – not the other way around”. I could not agree more!

Too often we focus on simply getting the task done and we avoid putting ourselves in the shoes of our clients to truly understand what solutions the business should be providing.

To apply experience design, there’s a process involved and elements you need to consider:

  1. Research: Conducting studies, interviews, and observations to determine problem and cause. Ask questions and listen!
  2. Analyse: Review findings and re-define the problem. Sometimes step one can reveal that the problem you thought you had initially is far bigger than you anticipated.
  3. Ideate/ Prototype: Create ideas to solve the problem.
  4. Prototype/ Test: Put it to the test! Show your clients and take on feedback for the final solution.

The key takeaway I get from these steps is that it is vital to involve your clients in the process – this is type of design approach is referred to as ‘Human Centered Design’. We must involve our clients in designing their experiences to ensure we are providing them the right solution. You’d be very surprised how many of your clients would love to be involved in such initiatives.

It’s important to also recognize that not everyone knows where to start when it comes to this and if this is you, I encourage you to consider recruiting a person who has the experience (internally or externally) and is passionate about it.

Here’s a great example of the payoff this type of design process can achieve for your business:

A hospital in America wanted to know how they could ensure they were providing a pleasant experience for the patients that stayed with them. In pursuit of human centered design, they hired a professional experience designer to conduct research and provide recommendations.

The designer jumped into a hospital bed and placed a camera next to his head (in-line with what he could see) and spent a day in the life of a patient. Watching the footage back, he identified that for most of a patient’s day, all they saw was a dull grey roof. Fellow patients concurred that they were sick of looking at it. Imagine how bored you’d be!

Following the research conducted, the hospital had their roofs painted by a professional artist and eliminated the dull grey. Patients were delighted with the change and the feedback was nothing but positive. It gave them something else to focus on during what is usually a difficult time.

If the hospital hadn’t have hired this professional, odds are they would never have thought to jump into a bed and take a walk (or lay) in the shoes of a patient. Very effective and the return on investment was profound.

As we Australians head into summer, I encourage you to take a walk to your local park sometime this week, sit in the sun and watch this TEDx talk by Evan Fried on your phone. It’s 8 minutes long and will open your mind to designing experiences that solve problems. Get some vitamin D and a better understanding on how to tackle the next stage of your CX journey!

What services or products are you cooking up for clients that might need the human touch first?

Data-Driven Decisions

By Bec Loves CX, Homepage, IndustryNo Comments

You’ve put your Customer Experience Strategy out into the atmosphere and now your team and your business have the foundations set and completed your first step in becoming a CX guru! 

What happens next? You deep dive into understanding your clients, using Voice of Customer (VOC), Customer Insights and Understanding.

When you listen, you learn!

Shifting your focus to understanding your clients is the best approach for enabling your team to gain a genuine understanding of who their audience is. When you know this, you can then start using this information to align your CX strategy and your CX delivery with your clients’ best interests. Calling all Accountants – Who doesn’t love making data-driven decisions, am I right?

There are two types of approaches that can be used to collect information:

  • Quantitative 
      • Relationship surveys
      • Touchpoint surveys
      • Focused surveys
  • Qualitative 
    • Unsolicited customer feedback
    • Ethnographic research
    • Focus groups
    • Voice of employee – Don’t forget, employees are our clients too!

For example, Airport security collected data (quantitative) and conducted observations (qualitative) of passengers to identify that floppy-eared sniffer dogs were viewed as less intimidating to passengers and made the experience more enjoyable and people more cooperative, therefore in most cases, the dog that sniffs your bags prior to departure will most likely look like a dog you would want to cuddle.

How do we make sure we provide the “fluffy puppy” experience?

Whilst quantitative data collection enables you to make data-driven decisions, you must consider the fact that the surveys are created by you, and you decide what to ask – Before you send a survey, ask these questions:

  • What are we trying to achieve – Is the survey going to bring value to the business? Or am I wasting clients time with a pointless survey?
  • Are we asking the right questions? 
  • Are we only asking what we think we need to ask and not what we should be asking?
  • If we’re asking the wrong questions, is the data going to be accurate? 

As much as accountants thrive on data, it’s important when collecting it, that we get it right or the decisions we make based on the results will be misaligned. Data can be our friend or our foe, don’t rush the process and make surveys valuable!

Qualitative information is where you can start to build up client personas because everyone is different but is just as important as one another in the CX lifecycle. 

Client personas are fictional characters that represent the key characteristics of the main types of clients you will encounter through the business. It is an easy way of capturing your understanding of them and putting a personal touch on them.

For example, you might have a client that (for persona purposes) is called ‘John’. John is a 37-year-old business executive, who is a sole trustee of his own SMSF. When he comes in for his annual appointment with you (the accountant), you notice he drives a Tesla and always wears a handmade suit. John is sophisticated and is always short on time.

For someone like John, you would design your CX delivery based on your CX strategy and ensure it aligns with his persona.

Again, this can be your friend or your foe. Don’t ever simply create personas off the top of your head. Do your research and really get to know people. This will ensure your fictional characters accurately represent different pools of clients that do business with you and help you to design CX journeys for each type of client.

Your investment in research and data collection should be at the core of every decision you make, be it CX or otherwise. How are you going to adopt these approaches in your business today?

Customer Experience Strategy: Building the boat!

By Bec Loves CX, Homepage, IndustryNo Comments

Before we can steer the ship, we must first build the boat!

Last month, we worked on coming to terms with how clients truly perceive us, and we’ve got a pretty good understanding of what remarkable experiences are. The next question we need to ask ourselves is “What’s next?”.

Before we can steer the ship, we must first build the boat! This is where your Customer Experience Strategy comes into play. Call me a CX nerd, but I absolutely LOVE this part of the process as it’s where creative freedom is your friend and you start to bring CX to life.

The CXPA defines the CX strategy as “… our intended Customer Experience, how it links to our overall organisation strategy and objectives and how it aligns to our brand values and attributes.” This will build the foundations of your approach to customer experience and give your team direction.

We need to create our vision, values, and branding, centred around CX and aligned with the business direction. This will build a foundation for realistic expectations of experience for your staff and your clients.

For some inspiration, The Ritz Carlton Hotel penned their CX vision as “We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen”. When I read this, I would assume that as a customer of the Ritz I could expect an experience of a glamorous standard, to be wined and dined. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hector Elizondo from ‘Pretty Woman’ was there, ready to teach me which fork goes first. I drew this conclusion from one sentence, powerful right?

Once you have your vision, you can build on this with values. These are generally short points outlining the core values that support your vision and sets a standard of what you might look for in potential applicants that join your team in future. For example, if I were tasked with writing the values that underpin The Ritz Carlton’s vision it would comprise of words such as:

  • Opulence
  • Exclusive
  • Personal
  • Refined

Now that you have your vision and values, we need to consider what implicit and explicit promises your business is making to the wider audience. Below are some questions to ask internally and externally – Remember, we can never assume we know the answer ourselves!

  • What are our clients’ expectations of the experience we should be providing, based on the impression our brand portrays?
  • What specific promises are we making? 
  • Are our clients’ expectations of CX, and the promises we make around CX, align with our CX and business strategy?
    • Are they realistic expectations? 
    • How can we make sure we get this right from the very beginning of a client’s journey?

Now you are armed with this information, the boat won’t build itself! Block out some time to meet with your team and brainstorm how you could approach this.

Trading Hobbyist: Accounting trap or goldmine?

By Homepage, In the Media, IndustryNo Comments

Trading Hobbyist: accounting trap or goldmine?

Never before has there been such a perfect storm leading to potentially either a goldmine or a nightmare for accountants. In this post, I will attempt to explain why accountants need to be prepared, how we got here and how you can turn a possible disaster into a goldmine for your firm.

It has been written and talked about ad nauseam – the world has changed. Ever since March 2020 we were told to go home: it’ll only be a few weeks and then we can all go back to normal. As weeks turned into months and the months into years and the situation spiralled out of control, many of us struggled with what to do with all this extra time we had on our hands. We were no longer distracted by social activities, ferrying kids around to various sports or being forced to go on holidays.

It was finally here. This was our chance. We were home when not eyeing people off suspiciously at the supermarket, or trying to hold in a cough at the chemist (just a dry throat, I swear). And then the storm hit. The formula looked something like this:

Increased time at home + technology at our fingertips + low brokerage fees = we could all be the Wolf of Wall Street.

Finally living the dream. Sitting around in pyjamas, a bowl of corn chips resting on our enlarged bellies, phone in one hand while keeping an eye on whatever it was Netflix told me everyone else was watching so why aren’t you. And within the phone the power to trade across time zones, across markets, derivatives, options, CFDs, crypto… Endless opportunities to make your millions, or quietly realise a loss that would never be spoken about.

This scenario may sound familiar or chances are you know someone that went down this path. Some people were just passing the time with a flutter, others legitimately trying to build wealth. Either way, we know that a lot of Australians did this.

According to SelfWealth’s (a flat fee retail share trading platform) Annual Report, active traders on their books increased by 105% during FY21 and the total number of trades increased by 147% for the same period¹. The reduced costs associated with working from home and lack of alternatives meant people had a surplus of cash and now that cash became seed capital for their own private hedge fund.

While the popularity of ETFs is growing, only 15% of investors choose this investment type compared to 58% of investors directly holding Australian shares (ASX, 2020)². A key area to watch is the number of investors dipping their toes (and sometimes up to their neck) in the ever-expanding galaxy of cryptocurrencies. According to the AFR, 1 in 5 Australians is likely to buy cryptocurrency in the next 12 months³.

We are now seeing investors using multiple brokers and exchanges to take advantage of sign up offers and referral programs. This may make sense for the investor looking to capture the highest return possible, but it does mean that they may end up with poor records and difficulty in tracking their investments.

Throw into the mix buybacks, stock splits, DRPs, demergers as well as the even more complex world of crypto yield farming and come tax time there will be either underreporting (non-compliance) or a heap of work for someone to reconcile the data and make sense of all the transactions.

While excel has been one of the greatest fintech solutions since Lotus 1-2-3, it does have limitations. Excel formulas can be error-prone, time must be invested for compliance changes and reconciliation back to any data source is limited or non-existent.

Luckily for today’s accountants there exists a whole new world of automation: an ecosystem of data feeds, AI and automated processing that will drastically reduce the amount of time required to keep track of CGT records, produce financials and arrive at a reliable tax optimised position.

The perfect storm has enabled trading and wealth creation for a whole new generation and now this generation needs your help to make sure they do not give it all back with poor tax planning and compliance issues.

References:

  1. SelfWealth Limited Annual Report (2021, June 30)  https://www.selfwealth.com.au/investor-centre/
  2. ASX Australian Investor Study (2020) https://www2.asx.com.au/blog/australian-investor-study
  3. AFR (2021, June 8) Four million Aussies set to buy into crypto https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/four-million-aussies-set-to-buy-into-crypto-20210608-p57z2g

CX is Far from a Fad!

By Bec Loves CX, Homepage, In the Media, Industry3 Comments

You may have heard word on the street that Client Experience (CX) is the new industry fad and that if you don’t embrace it, your business is setting itself up for failure. This is a controversial opinion among critics however, only one part of this is true and I can say with confidence, CX is far from a fad!

CX has been around for decades however, it has commonly been mistaken for customer service and pumping valuable dollars into the latest and greatest technology. Although these are contributors to CX, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. The expectations from our clients to deliver on CX is growing day by day. 

CXPA refers to Client Experience as “the perception that customers have of an organisation – one that is formed based on interactions across all touchpoints, people and technology over time”. 

I interpret this as an emotional connection you form with a business based on your experiences with them on all levels. It’s that heart-fluttering nostalgia you get when Mr Whippy drives by playing music, in the middle of summer – Doesn’t that take you back to some fun memories? And Mr Whippy generally drove a beat-up old van and his ice cream machine was probably older than your parents, but the experiences and memories that it gave you evoke a fuzzy feeling every time.

The first question to ask yourself is this: How do our clients perceive our business? 

Many of us have been guilty of drawing off assumptions however, the key to CX is facing the hard facts of what clients really do perceive or feel when they think of your business. The biggest mistake business owners make is assuming their business is perceived a certain way and implementing changes based on this. This is self-sabotage!

Hearing and seeing hard facts or data on this matter can be a hard pill to swallow for some but if you have a genuine understanding of your client’s perception, you’re already on the path to CX success and can start implementing meaningful change.

I could go on about CX for hours and hours and don’t worry, I will! But before I flood you with what I have learnt about the six competencies of Client Experience (and work to convert you into a CX superstar!), I’d like you to think about the following points:

  • Mr Whippy was delivering Client Experience to children decades ago, it’s not a fad that will fade away and it doesn’t mean you need the latest and greatest of everything. 
  • There are two types of business owners in the world, the ones that have already embraced CX and the ones that will be forced to embrace it in order to survive. Which one do you want to be?
  • Client Experience is a genuine feeling and perception of your business.

Let’s make a start on this journey together and pick one point from this post that you can apply in your everyday life. It will make a world of difference and allow you to get a feel for what it is to live CX.

Thanks a million – CAS 360 hit 1,000,000 Annual Reviews!

By CAS 360, Homepage, Industry, NewsNo Comments

Thanks a Million!

Last week CAS 360 passed a major milestone, there has now been more than 1 million ASIC Annual Reviews processed in CAS 360!

This is a massive milestone, and we are so thankful to our clients who use CAS 360 every day to complete their corporate compliance work. Without the faith and trust, you have put into the product we would not have come close to this number, we are forever grateful.  

We built CAS 360 with the intention to streamline and automate as much of the corporate compliance job as possible, the Annual Review was always the centerpiece of this. 

CAS 360 has now over a million times automatically downloaded Annual Reviews from ASIC, automatically alerted the user via the Annual Review Alert, automatically compared the data in CAS 360 to ASIC, and after a few clicks generated the Annual Review document pack, email delivered that pack to the company directors, and automatically marked up for digital signing. 

We hope for all of the CAS 360 clients, we have been able to streamline your processes and allow you to spend more time on other meaningful work. Also, we hope that businesses are receiving their documents earlier and signing them easier than ever before. 

We are also so proud to play a part in generating revenue for our clients. If our clients are charging $250 as a service fee for completing the Annual Review, that means… Oh right,  you’re probably an accountant… You know how much has been generated by firms.

Of course, in 2021 we have made this process even more streamlined with the release of Multi Annual Reviews, allowing users to complete their Annual Reviews for the day/week in one simple process. 

However, we are not done with it yet, we have one of our biggest and best innovations yet to come later in 2021, focused on streamlining one more area of the Annual Review process… Stay tuned!

Lockdowns truly suck

By Homepage, In the MediaNo Comments

Lockdowns affect our entire country. They hurt every sector.

Really disappointing to hear and see people in Victoria and in other parts of the country taking swipes at those in lockdown which are taking place in NSW and across Australia. Those who are should have a good hard look at themselves.

What we have been through in Victoria over the last 12 months is not something I would wish upon anyone. We should be the last to applaud lockdowns given our experience and taste for the devastation they cause. Ron Lesh and I speak often about such matters. The toll is heartbreaking and real.

How short are our memories? How quickly we forget that over the past 15 months, we in Victoria have been locked down for over 170 days with restrictions right through and with us today.

We would have gladly exchanged place with our friends in Sydney to experience the freedom they had at the drop of a hat.

Are we not one Nation? One, people? One hurts, we all hurt?

Lockdowns affect our entire country. They hurt every sector. They hurt people emotionally, financially, socially and physically. No one wins in lockdowns. They are draconian and crippling on all fronts. The hit on mental health is far-reaching, affecting generations to follow well beyond the life of this virus.

The leaders across our states have a lot to give account for and we should all be questioning the harsh, disproportionate measures. The last thing we should be doing is heralding lockdown as great leadership. It is not!

The biggest threat to our country is not the VIRUS. The biggest threat is that we have forgotten what it means to be truly Australian.

Working from home: My observations. For your consideration.

By Culture, HomepageOne Comment

The last 14 months have changed the way we work. With many of us forced to work from home. We have had to adjust by force.

While many employees claim how amazing the arrangement is, cracks are appearing and we are to be concerned.

While in many cases yes productivity has increased, my view is that true engagement has decreased. The glue that keeps people together and helps organisations build great culture has taken a hit and it is a threat to our organisations and people.

On the people front, we have much to be concerned about. The risk of losing team members has never been higher. Firstly as a result of people shortage. Secondly, people are isolated, disconnected and more vulnerable to being poached. Thirdly, they have missed out on much training and development, which takes place professionally and in learning from and in working with their peers. Many are simply just doing their jobs, the same thing day in and day out. Bit by bit, as their skill set remains stagnant, they are becoming detached and concerned about their career advancement.

People’s mental health has taken a hit. In Melbourne, the latest lockdown, while not long, was the hardest. While finally stepping into a sense of normality our freedoms were once again taken from us. Many are suffering. Many in silence. Much of this has been heightened by isolation, fear, the erosion of a sense of belonging and comradery that keeps people engaged, interested and connected.

Human engagement is so important on many fronts. As leaders, our role is to set the vision for the team and to excite and inspire your team towards it. This cannot be done virtually. Social aspect aside, human engagement also allows us to get a better gauge of where people are truly at. Observation is such an important part of encouraging and building a culture of wellbeing.

I am all for a balanced working arrangement. One where there is flexibility that provides a healthy balance of working from home. One that includes enough touchpoints with their peers and the greater team to ensure they are connected and where culture can continue to be built. Human touch has never been more important and failure to encourage it will cost us both the short and long term.