November 2015 – SIFTSORT: BLOG | PRESS

Lesson 101: Listen to Your Customers

I regularly answer Customer Care calls that come into our offices. As the founder and CEO, I think its important to be customer facing at all times. If you’re passionate about your idea then put yourself in a position to be a ‘real’ person to your customers.

We had recently got an email from a new customer who was having some trouble navigating and understanding the site and sent an email entitled, “CALL ME”. I had remember this customer before, named Gary, and wanted to follow-up with him myself. I had emailed him directly and told him that I would make myself available to him at his convenience. It happened that Saturday morning was the best for both of us. For almost 2 hours we had a delightful conversation about what he ‘loved’ about the idea of Siftsort.com, the need it fulfilled in his world and how he was actually using the heck out of the site, but confused about a few things that he emailed about beforehand. In the end it was really simple things but brought up very good suggestions about our User Interface, that we had completely overlooked. Lesson 101: “Listen to your customer”.

We both have the same CPA (who uses Siftsortpro.com) which is why he is using Siftsort.com. After telling him almost my life story including being a former Wall Street IT executive and he did the same, he asked if I would speak to his son who was in the recruitment business for financial firms and needed guidance. I was more than happy to and spent another 20 minutes with his son who was looking for referrals to candidates with high-level IT skills. “I know quite a few”, I said to him which led to “we should meet up for a coffee sometime”. During our conversation, his son mentioned relationships with a few banks that my company had been trying to network into. So there was a mutual interest to make that connection as it would possibly be ‘good business’ for both of us.

Handshake of two glossy characters — As CEO, always make yourself ‘real’ to your customers.

Needless to say, Gary was most grateful, but so was I. Lesson 102: “You never know where a conversation will lead to”.

Case Study: A CPA Firm Client Hack Drives Innovation

An accounting firm had recently implemented Siftsortpro.com after one of their large clients had her email hacked while traveling abroad.

The culprits had studied her email subject matter, vernacular and such and derived a way to send a series of emails from her account, to her administrator and broker requesting the transfer of nearly $400,000 over a few weeks time period. A similar task she would due as part of her normal course of business to certain vendors and partners.

While the accounting firm was not directly involved in any way, the partners realized the importance of not sending sensitive client information through their corporate email system. Data breaches can cost a CPA their license to practice.

Cost Savings That Matter
After implementation and training the 13-person firm, they realized an annual savings of $52,800 on postage, envelopes, paper, toner and reduced man-hours.

They increased the productivity of their entire office by streamlining the workflow and securely sharing client documents using Siftsortpro.com and having their clients use Siftsort.com.

“Siftsort saves of time, money and gives us peace of mind knowing that client files are highly secure”, Ross Wisdom, CPA

Everyday consumers are transmitting sensitive personal information to their trusted professionals in an unsecured manner. Its reckless to pass a blank form to a client in email and expect them to fill it out and simply email it back. As crazy as this sounds, it happens annually with my own insurance agent. Of course, I never comply instead using my own products (Siftsort.com) to send her a secure link to safely retrieve the documents from me. But come on? Wake up!

Advisors Can Help Clients Get (and Stay) Organized

Some people have been audited more than once. We all know its a scary thing. A friend of mine had her first, which was a “practice audit”.

She had shredded most of her older financial data, and in January 2003, she had to recreate almost everything from scratch for the audit year. This was because the auditor, who was on his second-ever IRS audit, was looking at everything since there wasn’t a specific problem. Needless to say, this was a tedious, time-consuming, and an unnecessarily stressful experience to have to gather everything again.

Financial advisors and accountants can help their clients get (and stay) organized by asking them to set up a FREE Siftsort.com account to securely organize information regarding their financial data, healthcare, tax-deductible receipts, vehicles and business expenses, dependents and more. This would also help them be ready for tax season or an audit, keeping records easily accessible to help get the maximum tax benefits available.

In the case of my friend, she had to go back to a three banks to get the data on 7 bank accounts for the audit. Plus, she had to pay the banks for all of the copies on top of that.

Now, electronic banking and bill payment simplifies all of that, but keep in mind most banks do not keep online statements for more than 3 years, making you pay a retrieval fee for statements in the later years. Unless you are still getting printed statements, you have no choice but to pay the fees.

With their advisor using a Siftsortpro.com account, they and their clients–using their personal, secure Siftsort.com account–can collaborate securely when making tax or financial decisions, whether through email, chat, fax…anywhere in the world.

Instead of keeping paper copies that can get lost or pile up in files, clients can forward the information to their Siftsort.com account, categorize it in a way that makes sense and easily be able to access the information when needed. Simplifying your life.

CPAs: Preparing for Year-End Tax Planner Mailings? Here’s a tip.

Many CPAs mail organizers to their clients at year end. There’s a cost to print, stuff envelopes, and mail the organizers, plus the labor to do all of that.

Other CPAs will email a link to a password protected PDF version of a client tax organizer. However, the passwords maybe too easy to guess and are based on other information that is readily accessible.

An alternative is to use Siftsortpro.com – then the CPA firm can securely share sensitive files using a number of different methods. Either share a folder with a client using Siftsort.com, then drop-n-drag the files into the folder. Or securely email the content from the Siftsortpro.com platform directly to the client using the Siftsort.com platform, or for clients who are not using the Siftsort.com platform, simply send a secure link, where the data is housed on our secure server, and the client can safely retrieve it after entering a one-time passcode sent to them. With all methods, the sensitive material never leaves the secure Siftsort environment, ensuring its safe delivery.

Then, as year-end financial data is gathered, clients can put their numbers in the organizer and securely share the content in the same manner with the CPA. In addition, keeping the backup documentation for themselves in a folder in their personal Siftsort.com account.

This can make the process smoother in addition to being more secure and less labor intensive (saves money) for the accounting firm as well as the client. All organized and all in one place, secure, shareable and accessible from anywhere.