I’m supposed to get kicked out of Thriveal, but I’m still here because I’ve got dirt on Jason.¹
I’m not supposed to be in Thriveal because I don’t own a firm. I don’t even work at a firm. I’m in industry, and I’m an accounting department of one, so depending on who’s asking, I’m either a CFO, a controller, a comptroller, or an AP clerk.
Get ready to have your busy season ruined.
“Research that attempts to quantify the relationship between hours worked and productivity found that employee output falls sharply after a 50-hour work-week, and falls off a cliff after 55 hours—so much so that someone who puts in 70 hours produces nothing more with those extra 15 hours, according to a study published last year by John Pencavel of Stanford University.”
After reading that, the feeling you’re experiencing is called the Semmelweis reflex. It’s the involuntary, reflexive tendency to reject new information because it screws up the way you do stuff. And now you’re probably thinking that you’re not prone to the Semmelweis reflex; that’s called bias blind spot, where you’re like, “Yeah, I totally get it that other people are prone to Semmelweis reflex, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t affect me. I’m a CPA.” Read more
So you value priced your customers. You thought you nailed it. You had value conversations to determine which results you provide that your customers will gladly pay for. You gave fixed price options. You burned your time sheets. You sold access to your intellectual capital.
And then tax reform came along with nine days left in 2017 and everybody has questions. EVERYBODY. You have questions. Colleagues are calling and emailing you to see if you know stuff, but you don’t, so you’re calling and emailing colleagues who are bigger nerds than you to see if they know. And even when you do find an answer, it comes with a disclaimer like “from what we can tell at this point” or “I’m not sure, but it appears as though” or “this is a total shot in the dark, I really have no f***ing clue.” Read more
H&R Block is not cheap, their customer experience isn’t great, and their ackquoorisee is as good as my spelling. But be honest. Is your firm better? How do you know? More importantly, do your clients know?
Price is easy. After writing my post on their pricing, I talked to one CPA who said he’s charging half of what H&R Block does. Half! He’s a CPA! Fortunately he can solve his pricing problem by taking his clients’ documents to H&R Block, have them prepare the return (he’s under no obligation to file with H&R Block), get their pricing, fix the return, charge $50 more than H&R Block, and tell his clients exactly how H&R Block was going to screw them. Brilliant! And it only breaks one confidentiality rule!¹
Two years ago, I let Liberty Tax eff up my taxes. This year I allowed H&R Block to do it. In last month’s post, I wrote about H&R Block’s weird-ass pricing. Next month, I’ll tell you all about how hard their accuracy sucked. This post, however, is my story about the H&R Block customer experience.
But this is only my experience. H&R Block files millions of returns every year. So you can’t generalize based solely on one experience. But I will anyways because it’s fun to generalize based solely on one experience.
Two years ago, I had Liberty Tax do my taxes. Bad Experience. Bad Pricing. They lost my children. Great dance opportunity.
This year I did it again, but this time I went to H&R Block to see how The Block would do. Over the span of my next three blog posts, I’ll to go in detail about H&R Block’s pricing, their customer experience, and their accuracy.¹
This post is the one about pricing. But first, I need to tell you how I got here. Read more