Your Client Question Agent Answers Clients While You Review Returns
The Client Question Agent takes the questions that arrive all day by email, phone and text so your preparers and bookkeepers are not pulled out of review to answer them. The AgentWorks Client Question Agent logs each question on the client's record, answers routine ones with the replies your firm has approved, and routes anything that needs professional judgment to the person who owns the engagement, while your team stays with the client work in front of them.
What it takes off your plate
Ask any managing partner where client questions go today and the honest answer is: everywhere. One client emails the senior who did last year's return. Another calls the front desk. A client business owner texts the bookkeeper a photo of a notice. There is no central list, so nobody knows how many are open.
The same question gets answered differently depending on who picks it up. One staff member says the extension is filed, another says it is pending. Response times run from an hour to several days depending on who is out, who is buried in a return, and whose inbox the question landed in. The partner has no view of what clients are asking or whether they got a timely, accurate answer.
The cost is review time broken into pieces, answers the firm would not stand behind, and clients who feel ignored in the weeks they most need to hear from you.
What the Client Question Agent does, step by step
The Client Question Agent starts with the communication:
- Receives the question. Through Gmail, the phone line or text, the agent picks up the question, identifies the client and the engagement, and confirms to the client that it is logged.
- Sorts it. It separates status and logistics questions (Has my return been filed? What is still missing? When is my meeting?) from questions that need a professional: a tax position, a notice, a planning decision.
- Answers what it is allowed to answer. For status questions it checks the engagement in your tax software and document portal, such as Intuit ProConnect and SmartVault, and replies with the answer your firm approved for that situation, worded the same way every time.
- Routes the rest. Anything involving advice goes to the preparer or partner on the engagement with the client's words, the history and the documents attached. The agent does not give tax advice; the professional does.
- Chases the reply. If the owner of the question has not answered within the window your firm sets, it reminds them, then escalates to the partner.
- Closes the loop. When the professional answers, it confirms the client received the reply and marks the question resolved.
Then the data work: every question, answer and handoff is written back to the client record, and questions the agent sees repeatedly are flagged so the firm can add an approved answer.
Where the work is recorded
An agent that cannot record its results is a chatbot. Every call, email and text the Client Question Agent handles lands on the client's record in the CRM your team already sees: what was asked, when, what was answered, who it was routed to and when the client heard back. The engagement in your tax software and the files in the portal stay the source for status; the agent reads them rather than keeping a separate version.
The next morning, the partner opens one list: questions answered overnight, questions waiting on a preparer, anything past its response window, and the topics clients asked about most. A staff member picking up a client call sees the whole thread before saying hello. The same approach keeps the document chase organized, where each missing item is tracked to the client who owes it.
What your people do instead
Your preparers and reviewers work a return from start to finish without being interrupted by status requests. Your bookkeepers finish reconciliations instead of rereading a text thread. Your partners spend their client calls on the conversations that need them: planning, a notice that needs a response, a client business deciding how to pay estimated taxes this year.
Clients hear back from the firm with one answer, in one voice, and know their question is not lost.
Customer service and client satisfaction are the human job. The AgentWorks Client Question Agent keeps the questions logged, answered and chased so your people can focus on the client work in front of them.
One next step
Not sure whether client questions are the first workflow to hand over? The free Industry Assessment looks at your client service, intake and bookkeeping work and shows which workflow an agent should take first. You can see every accounting agent on the accounting industry page.
See where the Client Question Agent would start in your accounting business.
I'm Rachel, the Accounting ambassador here. The free Industry Assessment reads your website and asks how calls, follow-ups and records happen today, then shows the first workflow worth handing to an agent like this one — and what your team gets back. Leave your email and I'll send the link.
Rachel replies from accounting@agentworksstudio.com. One email with the link — no list, no drip, unless you ask for the weekly letter. Or go straight there →