Ask Yourself Three Questions

1. Where do most of your new clients come from?
2. How do you know that your clients are happy?
3. How can you effectively cross-sell services to your clients?

For most of us the answer to the first question is, “Most of my new clients are referrals.” Recommendations make up the bulk of new business for almost all professionals, not just accountants. Some people, however, find it awkward or overly forward (some even say ‘unethical’) to ask their clients outright for referrals. A survey built into your CPA website design can be a simple, non-pushy but effective method for gaining leads from clients.

Identifying happy clients is usually much easier than identifying unhappy ones. Clients, for example, will only refer your services or invite you to birthday parties if they’re happy with you. These clients can provide us with valuable information, though – you need to know what you’re doing right so that you can keep on doing it.

Unfortunately, many unhappy clients won’t tell you until it’s too late to fix the problem.  A survey gives them a way to tell you what you need to improve in time to fix the problem!

Finally, a vital source of business is cross-selling new services to existing clients. But again, how can you go about effective cross-selling without being pushy?

A survey can be a very simple, cost-effective solution for all of these problems. A quick and easy client survey allows you to gauge the satisfaction of your clients, nip potential problems in the bud, cross-sell services and gain hot leads.

Few firms regularly survey their clients, and even fewer get surveys right. Typical reasons given for avoiding surveys altogether include: “We won’t learn anything we don’t already know”; and “We’re too busy serving clients to survey them”.

Behind these excuses lies a dangerous attitude: “We’re worried that we’ll hear something we don’t want to hear.”

Designing Your Survey

Even when firms do survey, the questionnaires are often too long, too complicated, and produce results that don’t really lead to any obvious conclusions or actions.

Avoids these traps. Keep it down to a few well chosen questions so clients are more likely to take the time to complete it.

Carefully word the questions to get straight to the heart of the matter and at the same time make them general enough that the client can say what he wants to say. A good survey will provide you with precisely the information you need to decide on effective follow-up actions.

Example

The Questions

1. Can you suggest any ways that we can improve our service to you?
2. Our mission is to help you achieve success on your terms. To what extent have we helped you do this in the past year?
3. We are here to help you achieve your personal and business objectives. Where do you want to be this time next year?
4. What would it mean to you to achieve these goals?
5. What more can we do to help you in the next year?
6. Is there anyone you know that you feel would benefit from our expertise? If so, you may wish to use the space to provide contact information. We always appreciate your referrals!

What the answers can tell us

1. This question gives clients an opportunity to express dissatisfaction, but forces them to do so in a way that gives you constructive feedback and an opportunity to fix the problem.
2. This is a chance for the client to give you positive feedback, but it requires them to be specific, enabling you to identify areas where things are really working well. If this client appreciates a particular service, so will others.
3. Questions 3, 4, and 5 are all about positioning yourself as a trusted adviser. This question will help you identify your clients goals and judge the feasibility of your clients expectations.
4. This will help you understand your client. There are very few “selling points” (things that people really want). This question might help you identify what selling points are most important to your client. Does he want power? Security? Status? Acceptance? Is he just looking for a good time? This question often provides us with insight as to what this clients best selling point is.
5. These answers allow you to further identify the right services to cross-sell. The answers will give you an ice-breaker when calling the client: “I noticed that in our survey you said you wanted to cut down on the time you spend on routine admin work. Did you know that we can help?”
6. This is a great, non-pushy way to gain strong leads, since it forces the client to think about specific contacts.

Adding the Survey to your Accounting Website

Every CPA Website Design provider is different. If you are already one of our clients adding a survey to your accounting website is free, and getting started is easy using our Customizable Online Feedback Forms. If you are a Gold or Platinum client just type up your questions and send them to support@cpasitesolutions.com and ask us to set you up with a Customer Satisfaction Survey page. If you are a silver client just log into your portal and click “Modify Your Site”. Go to “Add Page”. Select “Form Page”. Click next. You can rename the page and position it on the Nav Bar normally. To modify the form itself, just click on it.

If you have your website through a different CPA Web Design firm you will need to contact them to determine availability and cost for your online survey.