Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
Surveys will help you improve your firm’s service and increase revenue.
Surveys are a powerful tool for collecting feedback from your clients and other trusted professionals who regularly interact with your firm. They not only serve as a great platform to measure satisfaction or dissatisfaction with your services or products, but they are also an excellent way to expand your personal relationships with your clients. By surveying your clients, you are demonstrating that you value their opinions and are invested in creating a better experience for those who interact with your firm.
Surveys can also contribute to higher revenues. A white paper published by Cetera Financial Group and the international consulting firm Business Health found that advisors who formally ask clients to complete satisfaction surveys generate 31% more revenue on average than peers who do not solicit feedback.
If you are not accustomed to regularly surveying your clients, here are some basic guidelines to consider when it comes to survey design, layout and structure. If you are in the market for an online survey tool, FluidSurveys, SurveyGizmo and SurveyMonkey are some good platforms to consider.
Survey design matters
When designing your survey, address the format and layout. A poorly organized survey may cause respondents to skip questions or even prevent people from completing it at all. View your survey as consisting of three separate sections, each of equal importance: the introduction, the body and the conclusion.
Introducing your survey
The very beginning of your survey should explain its purpose as well as why your client or contact is being asked to complete it. People will want to know how the data being collected will be used and whether their personal information will be kept confidential. The chances of someone completing your survey will improve if they are given assurances that their responses will remain confidential. Also, it should be very clear whom the survey is coming from, so state your firm name in the introduction.
One detail that many people fail to include is a time estimate that clearly indicates how long the survey might take. If your survey uses complex navigation, include instructions at the end of your introduction so the respondent understands how to complete the survey with relative ease. Finally, if you decide to offer an incentive for completing the survey, such as a gift certificate, be sure to follow through. Nothing is worse than empty promises, especially as they relate to your trusted and loyal clientele.
Survey body
This section should include your survey questions and be based on your survey objective and the type of information you are looking to collect from your respondents. When developing your questions, be as direct and clear as possible so that it is easy for your clients to provide their answers.
In terms of survey design, the more visually appealing the survey the better. If you are using software that allows you to brand the survey with your firm logo and colors, I recommend that you do so.
Below are some additional tips to keep in mind:
- Use white space so your survey does not appear cluttered and visually unappealing.
- Include one question per line.
- Group similar questions together.
- Avoid small fonts or fonts that are difficult to read.
- Save demographic questions or those that ask for personal information for the end of the survey. Be mindful to keep sensitive questions at the end so that respondents don’t opt out early.
- Begin with easy questions first (e.g., yes/no or multiple choice questions) and slowly increase the difficulty (e.g., open-ended questions). This will increase the chances of someone completely the survey. If you make it difficult at the beginning, a client may quit before they even begin.
Survey conclusion or thank you
Conclude your survey with a brief paragraph thanking respondents for their time and participation. Once someone submits a survey, he or she should receive some notification that the survey was received. If the platform you selected allows it, create a follow-up email to reinforce the fact that you received the submission and greatly appreciate the feedback. You could also include your contact information in this section so that people can ask questions or express their concerns.
How advisors can use surveys
Now that you have an outline to follow for the basic survey design layout and structure, it is time to decide what type of survey is most applicable to your clients. The most popular type of survey is the client satisfaction survey. Some financial advisors may also use surveys to gather feedback after an event or to gauge the response to a new service or product introduced by the firm. At the very least, it is a best practice to administer a client satisfaction survey once a year. Assuming you know what clients are thinking or that a quiet client is a satisfied one is dangerous.
In a future article, I will show how to create survey questions that generate meaningful results.
Elizabeth Snyder is the Marketing Manager for clients of Wealth Management Marketing, Inc., a firm specializing in outsourced marketing department services to Registered Investment Advisors and fee-only financial planning firms. For more information, visit www.wealthmanagementmarketing.net.
Read more articles by Elizabeth Snyder
