Assessment Task 4 Instructions 

Carefully read the following: 

You are a self-employed Accountant with a number of small and middle-sized businesses as your clients. These businesses are local, and you know the owners personally after years of doing business together. Over the last year you have noticed that your workload is building, so you are considering taking on a bookkeeper to help out with some of your tasks. Before you employ the bookkeeper, you want to make sure that your customers are satisfied with the services you currently offer, and to know what skills any new employee should have to most benefit your business.

To help you with your decision, you choose to send a short survey to all of your clients. The survey should give you enough information so you can decide whether or not your business will continue to grow in the future and, if so, in what directions.

The survey should probe the clients’ satisfaction with your work and your time management on a sliding scale. It is also important for you to ask how they see their company’s demand for accounting services developing over the next few years. It is also important that you give each client the opportunity to give feedback that is outside the questions that you ask, so ask several open answer questions, too. 

Complete the following tasks:

1. Create a short survey that satisfies the above requirements. It should contain at least six sliding scale questions, as well as at least two open questions.

The sliding scale questions should be such that the customer can strongly agree or disagree with them, or indicate something in between. This will give you a good idea of how your customers see your work. 

An example of a sliding scale question could be:

Circle the to rate the statements below, where 1 means that you completely disagree and 10 means that you totally agree.

When I leave a message for you, it is responded to quickly.

1     2          3          4          5          6          7          8          9          10

An example of an open question could be:

How would you describe the reception you receive when you arrive in my office?

1. Send an email to one of your clients (your assessor) 

The text of the email should be in grammatically correct English, written in an appropriate (polite, business-like) style.

The text should explain why you are sending them a survey, and ask them to fill it out and return it as soon as convenient. 

Attach the questionnaire to the email.

Of the 30 customer surveys that were sent out, 16 customers responded to the survey with the findings as follows: 

Response time

Average rating: 6

Three comments received as follows: 

• I really like your services but do find the length of time you take to respond to be annoying.
• Quicker response time would be better. 
• Why not introduce clear service standards so we as customers know when we can expect you to respond.

Professional service

Average rating: 9 

• No additional comments

Value for money

Average rating: 8

One comment as follows: 

• The prices of your services are higher than most accountants, but I think they are worth it.

Additional services

• I think employing additional accountants would improve service time.
• A bookkeeper would be a welcome addition to your business. 
• I’d also like to use the services of a bookkeeper within your company.

1. Send out a short email to your clients (your assessor).

Review the survey results, analyse the issues and research the Internet to identify how other similar companies address such issues. Then send out a short email to your clients with the results of the survey and your intended actions. 

The text of your email should be in grammatically correct English, written in an appropriate (polite, business-like) style.

The text should explain the purpose of the email and clearly identify the outcomes of the survey and your response.