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Luxury Hotels, Lattes and…Taxes! Our Approach to Client Satisfaction Places Us Among Top Companies

February 27, 2024

Why do people love Armanino just as much as luxury hotels and world-famous coffee? What makes our clients want to tell the world about a great experience with something like taxes? We’ve learned that caring for people is in the details, and it’s all about listening and taking action.

A great experience with a brand is something we instantly recognize as consumers. There’s magic in the way you feel when your coffee is customized just how you like it, your hotel attends to even the smallest details or your phone seems like it can read your mind

Some of the highest-rated, most credible and most adaptive brands in today’s marketplace also tend to have one thing in common: a high Net Promoter Score (NPS). We are proud to consistently rank among the highest in the accounting profession, regularly surpassing the industry average by double digits.

What Is NPS and How Do Companies Use It?

The NPS model allows companies to understand how satisfied their customers are by asking them, via a third-party survey, how likely they are to recommend their business to a friend or colleague. Using a scale of 1-10, consumers rate their experiences with companies, and the ones with the highest scores — those who are more likely to have customers who would recommend their businesses as promoters — earn their rank among the most trusted, influential and innovative brands in the marketplace. But how this scoring differs from other models is in the calculation. The percentage of scores of 1-6 (detractors) is subtracted against scores of 9-10 (promoters), which then produces a numerical value. This makes even more impressive the fact that 72% of our responding clients are classified as promoters.

Since this calculation makes it harder to score a 9 or 10, achieving a high NPS can be difficult if you’re not offering the highest level of customer service. This rigorous third-party validation is a great way for companies to compare their performance with their industry peers and for consumers to know where they can establish trust.  

Companies that participate in the process to uncover their NPS can learn a lot about what their clients value and how satisfied they are with the level of service they receive. For many businesses, a key aspect of participating is evaluating the feedback, including direct shout-outs and success stories from their superfans, as well as information about negative experiences with their company that might drive people away and require a change.

How and Why We Participate in the NPS

Each year, Armanino engages ClearlyRated, an independent third-party research firm focused on NPS, for help reaching out to our clients to hear about what they like most about working with us, the value they get from our services and where improvements can be made, if needed. We participate year after year because we want to know as much as possible about our clients’ experiences with our services and experts.

We want to understand our clients’ experience so we can adjust our offerings to ensure we deliver on our promise to be the most innovative and entrepreneurial accounting firm out there. Most importantly, we want our clients to feel comfortable and secure in their choice to engage Armanino. When we find ways to understand our clients, we can be better partners and we build higher levels of trust ultimately leading to great impact. We can also provide better solutions through innovation when we have stronger connections with the organizations we serve.

Our NPS Feedback Drives Innovation and Service

When we receive NPS responses and testimonials from our clients, we treat this information with the utmost care. As we see it, this is one of the most authentic and meaningful forms of feedback we can receive — and we’re delighted to learn that our clients would recommend us to others! Each year, however, we take extra steps beyond simply acknowledging our score to make sure we’re listening to our clients and that we act on what we hear.

Thanks to client participation in NPS research, we’ve heard about how different individuals and groups have gone above and beyond to help clients with their most pressing challenges. We’ve learned about what resonates most with our clients and what they’d like to see us do differently.

We’ve also been able to approach our NPS feedback from a place of innovation and improvement. This has allowed us to identify areas of opportunity for us to provide an even better client experience.

For example, because we heard client feedback, we’re in the process of refining our digital client experience through a new platform that puts more control in our clients’ hands and allows for more streamlined communication with our teams. NPS feedback is also one of the reasons we make knowing our clients’ industries such a high priority.

Putting Clients First

Throughout our years of participating in the NPS process, we’ve been able to shape our approach to putting clients first. We’re always looking for ways to improve and evolve, just like our clients are as industry leaders in their own right. It’s this people-forward approach that helps us form deeper relationships with our clients and work even better together.

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