“That’s cute, I’ll just text you”: how one firm won over its most skeptical client

When the client experience speaks for itself

When your firm moves clients onto a new system, there’s a specific type of client you brace yourself for. The one who has done fine without it for years. Who trusts the personal touch, the phone call, the text at 9pm. Who hears “we’re setting you up in a new system” and thinks, here we go.

Jonny Baker was that client.

Baker is the Chief Financial and People Officer at Lone Star Chemical, a national plastics distributor doing between $30 and $50 million in annual revenue depending on the market. It’s a growing, family-owned operation, and Baker sits at the center of it. 

His accounting firm handles everything for them: the books, the entity returns, the personal returns, and the other holdings the owners carry. That’s a lot of moving pieces, and a lot of trust, running through one relationship.

So when the firm introduced TaxDome, Baker wasn’t sold. “The firm has a personal touch, so we were hesitant,” he said. “It seemed to be this tool and tech that had big promises, but I wasn’t sure it would actually deliver.”

His response? “That’s cute. I’ll just text and call you.”

It took two weeks to change his mind.

Before: more management than strategy

Ask Baker what the relationship felt like before, and he describes a drain on his time.

It was the follow-up. Every week, on every entity. “It felt like we spent most of our time organizing our tax team rather than finding tax efficiencies or solving for new strategies.”

For a CFO, that’s the worst possible trade. The whole reason you hire a strong firm is to buy back your attention for higher-value work. Instead, the logistics were eating it.

The turn: two weeks in

Baker just needed to try it. “Within two weeks, I played around in TaxDome, saw the organization, the clarity, the message feature, and understood the to-dos,” he said.

What clicked was control. 

“For me as a CFO of a family-owned business, it helped me identify what needed follow-up on our side, and to help our provider keep things moving so they could focus on our tax work.”

Those two weeks from the firm’s side? Their most reluctant high-value client was in TaxDome, working through his own list, without anyone walking him through it. The relationship he valued stayed exactly where it was, but the clutter around it cleared. So the conversations could be about tax strategy again instead of status-chasing.

The daily reality: everything tied to the entity

Baker’s situation is more complex than most. He’s running an active, growing business while also helping with family-office items for the owners, which means he needs to see the whole picture across multiple taxable entities at once.

That’s where it earns its keep for him. “Before, it was a phone call to get context about what we were talking about,” he said. “Now you see it by profile, and it’s clear what is needed and where.”

Jonny also names something email never solved:

The moment it proved itself

Every believer has a story where the tool quietly saved the day. For Baker, it was a hunt for an elusive Texas franchise tax number.

“We had a hard time tracking it down. We were hitting it from both our side and the CPA firm side,” he said. “We were able to use TaxDome to coordinate the attack, give some ideas, and then pass detailed instructions back and forth.”

A problem that would normally scatter across voicemails and forwarded emails instead ran through one organized thread, tied to the right entity, visible to everyone who needed it.

The feature he can’t live without

Baker uses the full toolkit: uploading and downloading documents, e-signatures, secure messaging, payments. But when asked which feature he would genuinely miss, he did not hesitate.

The accountability runs both ways.

“The checklist works well and keeps me honest,” he said. “It also lets the CPA know where to slot me, so I get more responsive as communication comes. I get to see where I am short on provision of docs, so it creates true outcomes.”

For the firm, that’s the end of document chasing on their most complex client. He can see what he owes them, so nobody has to ask.

Security he doesn’t have to think about

For a business handling this kind of money, a single secure home for financial documents matters. Baker put it plainly when asked whether security crossed his mind: “Yes. Look at the significant hacks that have happened.” 

The old approach, he said, meant scattered share points and file-share tools “where it was unclear where to go, what was what, and it took a translator.” 

One secure system beats that. For a CFO moving this kind of money, not having to think about where documents live is its own kind of relief.

The honest verdict

Baker isn’t a man who gushes. Asked what he would tell another business owner, he was measured and direct: “If your firm uses it right, and you are not afraid of technology, this can be very helpful.”

He’s clear-eyed that it takes engagement. “It still requires use and engagement,” he said. His advice to firms: a bit of orientation up front, short training videos, and clients are away.

And he offered a line that firms would do well to sit with: 

The high-value client you’re most afraid of losing when you change systems can turn out to be the one who takes to it fastest. Give them clarity, control, and a system that respects their time, and even the skeptic who said “I’ll just text you” can end up relying on it.