Our core services rely on our training as chartered accountants and we offer a range of information and assurance services as well as tax planning and compliance work (see Services). But most of our customers agree that our main contribution to their businesses comes from our role as trusted business advisors.

But if you are reading this to help you decide whether we are worth talking to - how can you judge whether you should give us your trust?

Choosing professional advisors is not easy. You know that you need help with issues that may be outside your own specialisms, but deciding who is going to be right for you can be something of a lottery.

When problems arise, they are usually not over technical issues (you should be able to rely on the professional qualification and requirements of continuing education for that). Instead, our research among our own and competitors' customers suggests that when things go wrong, it is usually simple service failures.

You know the sort of thing - letters or e-mails go unanswered, phone calls are not returned and no-one else can help with your problem. Perhaps you have not been kept informed of opportunities available to you; maybe help in interpreting your management information was not offered.

We have a long-term programme in place that looks at what we do from the point of view of our customers and tries to design all our systems to simplify life for them.

So...we all have direct-dial phones so that you can get straight through to the person you want. If you leave a message, they will call you back as soon as they can (and no, they won't forget).

We each have direct-to-our-desk e-mail.

And all meetings, phone calls and e-mails are recorded in a secure computer groupware system (Lotus Notes) so that if the person you need is not available, someone else has access to the background information they will need to deal with your query.

Each of our customer's business, financial and tax affairs are regularly discussed among a specialist team so that fresh thinking is routinely brought to bear on your affairs.

There are many other systems we have in place to help us give you the best service we can. And now, we back this up with a service guarantee that assures you that if we fail to meet the standards that we agree with you, you can reduce the price of our service to the level you think appropriate - and that could be zero!

Many of our competitors and other professionals are horrified by this guarantee - they believe our customers will rip us off; they just can't believe that sort of trust is warranted or that such an offer can work.

We've got news for them. It does. And the reason is that it ensures that we remain focused at all times on providing to our customers just what they want. Not just in the first few months when we take them on, but always.

Our service guarantee is just one part of our Fixed Price Agreement programme. If you'd like to know more about this, please contact David Powell.