How can you use surveys to follow up with clients?

1 Choose the right type of survey

Depending on your goals and the stage of your project, you may want to use different types of surveys to follow up with clients. For example, you can use a pre-project survey to understand your client's expectations, needs, and challenges. You can use a mid-project survey to check in on your progress, communication, and quality. And you can use a post-project survey to evaluate your results, impact, and satisfaction. Each type of survey should have a clear purpose, a specific audience, and a relevant timing.

2 Craft engaging and relevant questions

The quality of your survey questions will determine the quality of your survey data. You want to ask questions that are engaging, relevant, and easy to answer. Avoid asking too many questions, using jargon or acronyms, or leading or biased questions. Use a mix of open-ended and closed-ended questions to capture both quantitative and qualitative feedback. And make sure to align your questions with your survey goals and objectives.

3 Use an online survey platform

Using an online survey platform can make your survey creation and delivery easier and more efficient. Online survey platforms offer features such as templates, logic, branching, scoring, and analysis. They also allow you to customize your survey design, branding, and language. And they enable you to distribute your survey via email, SMS, web, or social media. Some popular online survey platforms are SurveyMonkey, Typeform, Google Forms, and Qualtrics.

4 Follow up and incentivize responses

One of the biggest challenges of conducting surveys is getting enough responses. To increase your response rate, you need to follow up and incentivize your clients to complete your survey. You can follow up by sending reminders, thank-you notes, or personalized messages. You can also offer incentives such as discounts, vouchers, gifts, or access to exclusive content or events. However, be careful not to compromise the quality or integrity of your survey data by over-incentivizing or coercing your clients.

5 Analyze and act on the data

The last step of using surveys to follow up with clients is to analyze and act on the data you collect. You want to use the data to understand your client's feedback, insights, and testimonials. You also want to use the data to improve your service, quality, and value. And you want to use the data to generate referrals, testimonials, and repeat business. You can use the online survey platform's features or other tools such as Excel, Tableau, or Power BI to analyze and visualize your data. And you can use the data to create reports, presentations, or case studies to share with your clients and prospects.