What
if a client approaches you with an engagement request that you are not
sure your CPA firm provides? Knowing which services are offered and how
they are performed helps to ensure you provide your clients with the
services they need.

You are approached by the Emerald Production
Company management to review and analyze their customer satisfaction
trends over the past 5 years. This assurance service would tell
management if their suspicions were correct in that customer
satisfaction has been declining, especially in the past 2 years.
Management currently evaluates customer satisfaction based on customer
retention and sales increases. While management sends out surveys via
mail and email to customers, response rates are very low. Management
does not consider the survey responses to be an accurate representation
of their customer service. In fact, only customers with negative
feedback are the ones who respond.

• Assuming that your firm can provide this type of service, where would you look to find guidance for this service?
• What standards would you need to follow?
• What type of report would you issue, and what should be included in the report?

Just do response each posted down below only.

Posted 1

Hello all!

CPA’s
offer many services and assurance services is one. These services help
to improve the effectiveness of the quality of information provided to
help management make decisions. As for guidance, a CPA would turn to
AICPA’s Assurance Standards Executive Committee.

To name a few standards that must be followed would be professional standard, positive attitude and communication skills.

There
is not a particular report for assurance services. However, I would use
an analytical report that would show the research on how to handle the
customers in a management perspective. The report will also contain
market conditions and different skills such as attentiveness, attitude,
and so on.

Posted 2

Hello Class,

CPAs
provide assurance services to improve the effectiveness of quality
information that could help management in making decisions. For this
type of service, the CPAs follow AICPA’s Assurance Standards Executive
Committee to obtain data that involves in evaluation and analysis of the
company’s information to identify the necessary requirements to result
in the highest benefits (Whittington & Pany, 2016, p. 766). In other
words, quality assurance includes the steps that help to prevent
problems, increase performance, reliability, and better to understand
customers, etc.

The standards that we need to follow in this case
are the criteria in measuring the customer care level and monitor the
client’s performance. This includes customer service satisfaction,
product and service quality, customers’ reliability and opinion, sales,
and many more. In order to have a solution, auditors need to collect
data through surveys, focus on groups, and area, etc. Then analyze the
information to come up with solutions.

For assurance service,
there isn’t a particular format report like for an audit. In fact, there
may or may not need to issue a report or just a simple report. The
issuance report is based on different circumstances to provide
information. For Emerald Production Company, the report should include
“the representation of the subject matter on customer satisfaction would
most likely include the criteria describing the way in which customer
satisfaction was defined and measured” (Whittington & Pany, 2016, p.
771).

Posted 3.

Good morning classmates,

• Assuming that your firm can provide this type of service, where would you look to find guidance for this service?
  A CPA firm that was asked to perform this type of assurance service
  could seek guidance from the AICPA’s Assurance Standards Executive
  Committee. In today’s technological business environment, accountants
  are called upon to provide more than just financial data. These
  assurance services coincide with good financial reporting and gives the
  business a better all-around approach to operating their business at
  peak efficiency.

• What standards would you need to follow?
  Other assurance services are covered under the general performance
  standards of AICPA, following Rule 201 in their Code of Professional
  Conduct (Pany & Whittington, 2016, p. 767).

• What type of report would you issue, and what should be included in the report?
  The advantage to this type of assurance service is that there are no
  standard forms. This allows the CPA firm to customize the data to each
  client that will work best for that client. It allows the CPA firm to
  not only be creative but give specific and relevant information to the
  client. With standard forms, you might have to include data that is
  irrelevant to their assurance service request, but with no standard
  report or form, all of the data you give the client will be exactly what
  they want, so they do not have to read through things that they have no
  interest in. This allows the client to get right to the point when
  reading your report so they can start immediately interpreting the data
  to make internal control changes. For the Emerald Production Company, we
  could show ratio data between sales and customer satisfaction, as well
  as looking at customer satisfaction compared to sales returns and
  potential warranty issues from production. Research could also show a
  better way for Emerald Production Company to obtain survey feedback from
  all customers, not just the ones with negative feedback.