How To Survey Your Clients, Get More Testimonials, and Turn Feedback Into Helpful Data
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Client surveys — they’re more important than you might think as a business owner and service provider! Even if you’re working with clients on a monthly basis and feel like you’re in constant contact with them, you still might not be in the know when it comes to client satisfaction.
The best way to know exactly how your clients feel about your services is to ASK them! Sending out regular questionnaires will ensure you’re always providing the highest level of service, so it’s worth the extra bit of time it takes to set up a system for collecting and using the data to improve your firm.
In this blog, we’ll tell you our exact approach for gathering feedback and data from clients of my firm Magnetic Bookkeeping & Consulting.
Keep reading to learn:
When you should be sending out client surveys
How to set up and send surveys
How to get useful data and testimonials on autopilot
We’re sooo passionate about gathering feedback and using it to make our firm the best it can be! Keep reading to swipe our tips on how to do this for your own firm too.
How Often Should You Ask Clients For Feedback?
Like I mentioned above, you might be overlooking the opportunity to specifically ask clients for feedback about your services. And it makes sense because you’re always going back and forth with your clients throughout the year, sending emails and hopping on Zoom calls, it could seem like an unnecessary step.
But what I’ve learned over the years of owning multiple businesses, is that clients typically aren’t just going to take the time out of their day to share feedback with you. Sometimes you just need to straight up ask them for answers and get curious!
As far as WHEN you should send out survey questionnaires to your clients, it’s really dependent on a few factors.
We recommend sending out a survey 6 months after onboarding a new client, and then every 6 months after that. Or, you can send it out annually if that’s more your style! It really just depends on how often you want to collect the data, how many clients you have, and how frequently you want to check in with them.
Keep in mind, your clients are busy people too! They probably won’t fill it out every single time, and that’s totally fine. As long as you’re making the effort to ask questions and improve your services, you’re more likely to get that valuable data (aka - you’ll never know how they really feel if you never ask them)!
How To Get More Clients To Fill Out Your Survey
You might be wondering if people actually fill out these surveys, and the answer is YES! We’ve found that our clients are typically happy to take the time and provide us with feedback about their experience just for the sake of being helpful.
But if you notice that you’re not getting a ton of responses, or the results aren’t as helpful, you can absolutely offer an incentive!
A $25 Starbucks gift card (or another similar gift) is a great way to say thanks to anyone who took the time to fill out your questionnaire. Sure, you’re spending money out of pocket, but you’re doing it in exchange for data that can ultimately make you a better service provider.
Plus, if you have any team members in a client-facing role, the data can help you evaluate if they’re living up to your expectations or if they need more support.
How To Structure Your Client Surveys For Success
If you take ANYTHING from this blog, let it be this: Don’t just send your clients an email with an open-ended question asking them to give feedback.
The most effective way to get super helpful feedback from a client survey is when you send it as a form!
We use Google Forms for this, but you can use any other form capture system that works for you. The reason we love Google Forms so much is because they offer the ability to create questions with a scale response.
Giving the option of a scale let’s you capture essential black and white data that you can easily compare to previous surveys! So if you notice an increase OR decrease in ratings, you have a better chance of learning what’s working and where you can improve.
Some questions that need a scale response might ALSO need a little more information, so you can always follow up with written response questions.
In the example above, the questionnaire reads:
How happy are you with your account manager?
Rate on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 being the worst and 10 being the best.
Who's your account manager?
Choose from a dropdown menu of options.
Can you share some feedback about your experience with your account manager?
Free response area.
By setting up the survey like this, we’re able to get more information about the questions that need that extra layer. Not all your survey questions would need to get this detailed, but that’s what’s so AMAZING about creating a custom survey that actually gives you helpful information!
Don’t want to create your own survey from scratch? We include our exact client survey form and how to use it in Breakthrough for Bookkeepers & Accountants.
Questions To Include In Your Feedback Questionnaires
There’s an endless list of questions you could include in your client surveys, but the best ones to ask are the ones that’ll truly make your firm better! A few that you might want to include would be:
How satisfied are you with the value of our services?
Please rate our communication and responsiveness.
How do you like using Keeper? (or some other client-facing app you use)
Once you discover the questions you want to ask, you’ll be able to consistently improve on your services and team member development. Whoop whoop!
At the end of your survey, there’s two things I HIGHLY recommend you do:
Add an opportunity for clients to leave a heartfelt testimonial. Boom, you just got social proof to use in your marketing and social media! Just make sure you add a disclaimer or have a checkbox that gives you permission to use the testimonial in public.
Sell your other services. Include a list of all your services, and ask them to check off anything they might want more information on so you can reach out and support them. I’ve sold additional services to existing clients this way before!
What we’re really trying to hit home in this blog is that you NEVER really know how your clients feel about working with you unless you ask! And sometimes it can be uncomfortable to get feedback, but it’s usually something you need to hear in order to improve. Happy clients are what keep you in business, so it’s 100% worth it to reach out on the regular and have those conversations with them.
If you’re not sure about everything you should add into your client feedback survey, or how to organize the data you receive — we’ve got you! In Breakthrough for Bookkeepers & Accountants, we provide our exact feedback questionnaire we send to clients AND we show you how to turn that data in to action steps to build a more efficient firm.
Not to mention the INCREDIBLE community and expert coaches that can’t wait to support you along your journey. It’s our high-touch group coaching program that offers everything you need to take you from booked out and busy to streamlined and scaling!
