Despite best intentions and continual efforts to improve, many accounting firms remain blindsided by one persistent issue: engagements that stall, stretch, or silently deteriorate.
The problem isn’t talent. It’s not capacity. It’s not even technology.
It's a misalignment between clients and firms. And most firms are underestimating just how much it’s costing them.
In Suralink’s Inside the Client Experience Report, we surveyed finance and accounting professionals across North America to better understand what it’s actually like to go through an audit, tax, or advisory engagement from the client side. What we found was a consistent story: clients are overwhelmed, communication breaks down frequently, and fragmented processes make even straightforward work harder than it needs to be.
These breakdowns don’t just cause inefficiency. They erode trust, drag down perceived value, and create churn risk that many firms never see coming.
This is the Client Readiness Gap—the silent disconnect between firms and clients that turns even strong relationships into strained ones.
The data throughout this guide reflects the broader accounting industry—not just Suralink’s firm and client users. To capture an accurate picture of today’s landscape, we intentionally surveyed beyond our own customer base, ensuring a true industry-wide perspective from the client’s point of view.
Let’s dive in.
Clients don’t come to accounting firms looking for magic. They want oversight, compliance, and third-party validation. And firms, for the most part, deliver on those core services.
But technical execution is no longer enough.
According to our data:
This gap isn’t about whether firms get the work done. It’s about how the work gets done—and how clients experience the process.
When asked what actually drives satisfaction, clients were clear:
In other words: clients expect accounting firms to be execution experts and operational partners. Firms that only check the compliance box are falling behind.
Even when firms meet deadlines, many engagements still feel like a burden on clients.
Balancing the demands of the engagement with day-to-day priorities is difficult; in fact, 75% of clients say this is a significant pain point.
And the friction doesn’t stop there:
Engagements, for many clients, feel like a second job—stacked on top of their already full-time responsibilities. And when firms don’t acknowledge or support that reality, frustration builds quickly.
The number one frustration clients cite isn’t pricing or deliverables. It’s unclear or time-consuming information requests, cited by 82% of respondents.
That frustration is amplified by other common issues:
These are avoidable problems with outsized consequences.
When requests aren’t clear, clients don’t respond correctly the first time. That leads to delays, rework, and wasted hours on both sides of the table.
Worse, it chips away at the firm’s perceived competence, even when the core work is technically sound.
One of the most striking findings in this year’s report is how frequent and disruptive communication misalignments are during engagements.
These aren’t isolated breakdowns. They’re recurring symptoms of a broader problem: a lack of process clarity and communication ownership.
And when clients fail to complete a request correctly the first time, it’s rarely due to negligence:
Every one of these points is a solvable problem—if firms take ownership of how they communicate.
Firms often treat request portals as a backend tool. Clients don’t.
This is the part of the engagement where clients live. It’s not peripheral—it’s the core experience.
What clients want is simple. 77% want clear, easy-to-understand instructions for each request
This isn’t about adding more tools. It’s about making the one tool clients use most work better for them.
Firms don’t need to overhaul every engagement process. But they do need to standardize how they communicate.
Start by:
If clients are unsure about what’s being asked—or can’t get answers—they’ll disengage. That’s not a technology problem. It’s a process leadership problem.
A modern portal isn’t just a file drop. It’s the operational hub of the engagement—and the #1 place where clients assess ease, clarity, and professionalism.
To improve it:
Clients are open to modern solutions—94% say they’re comfortable with AI in engagements, and 91% want a tool that confirms whether they’ve submitted the right document.
Even the best request system will create frustration if it ignores client capacity.
Firms need to start by asking:
Then adjust:
Empathy isn’t a soft skill—it’s a strategic one. And the firms that embrace it will build stronger, longer-lasting client relationships.
The timing for addressing the Client Readiness Gap couldn't be more urgent.
Firms are operating in an environment where margins are tightening, expectations are rising, and trust is harder to earn—and even harder to keep. What once passed as a “typical engagement delay” is now seen as a red flag.
Clients have more options, higher standards, and clearer ideas of what a modern engagement should look like.
They’re not just comparing firms anymore. They’re comparing experiences.
The firms that respond with speed, clarity, and empathy—supported by intuitive tools and repeatable processes will gain a measurable advantage in retention, referrals, and realization rates.
And that starts by seeing the gap for what it is: not a client problem, but a firm opportunity.
This guide shares the highlights—but it’s just the beginning.
The full Inside the Client Experience Report breaks down the data across every phase of the engagement lifecycle, with detailed charts, survey insights, and actionable recommendations for firm leaders, engagement teams, and operations professionals.
Download the full report here to dive deeper into the trends—and start closing the Client Readiness Gap for good.
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