Viewpoints | Advyzon

How (and why) to create a client survey

Written by John Mackowiak

A version of this article appeared in Advisor Perspectives on November 9, 2021.

Advisors are great at getting to know their clients — you have to be. Learning the intimate details of a person’s finances means learning a significant amount about them as a person, too. But there are some details about your clients that you might not know — things that don’t naturally come up as part of wealth or financial planning — that could do a lot to improve your relationship with them. And that’s where a client survey can come in handy.

Client surveys may be particularly helpful in the wake of COVID-19, since social distancing has thrown human interactions off kilter. Many people feel disconnected. And that can make right now a great time to ask clients what they think. People may be more willing to answer questions and share details now, since many are facing fewer inquiries in daily life. And you may get valuable information about how to keep your clients engaged, regardless of distance.

Just conducting the survey isn’t enough, however. You also need to make sure the survey is effective. Here are some of our tips for creating an impactful client survey.

  1. Have a clear goal in mind.

    What don’t you know about your clients that you wish you did? If you aren’t sure where to start, or you don’t know what you don’t know about clients, communication can be a good one. How we prefer to be communicated with can change over time and with trends. (In 2019, how many people do you know who used Zoom? Now, video chat is the norm for many people.) A survey can be a great way to find out if clients want to get emails from you and how frequently. You might also ask what social media platforms they use and where they get information on financial topics (other than you, of course). Knowing that your clients prefer the Wall Street Journal or that they’ve been seeing some great videos on alternative investments on TikTok can tell you a lot in just one question.

  2. Know how you’ll use the survey.

    In addition to a goal, you also want to know how you’ll use results. For instance, if you want to gauge client satisfaction, and then use those results with prospects, phrase the question in a way that will get you the most useful answer.

    If your goal is gauging client satisfaction and you want to share those results with prospects, you might ask: “Overall, are you satisfied with the financial advice we provide?” Offer the option to answer yes or no. This could get you a powerful takeaway for prospects: “92% of clients are satisfied with the financial advice we provide.”

    If, on the other hand, you want to gauge client satisfaction for internal use, you might ask clients to rate their satisfaction on a 1-10 scale, and you might want to ask more specific questions, like “How satisfied are you with financial planning?” and “How satisfied are you with how we manage your investments?”

  3. Structure the survey strategically.

    Market research firms will tell you that you get better engagement with surveys and questionnaires if you ease respondents into things. Asking clients to fill in the blank or write sentences straight off the bat, especially if the question requires thinking, can put them off the survey. It sends a message that the survey will take time and energy, and sometimes that can be just enough to make clients think, “I’ll do this later when I have more bandwidth,” or even, “This looks like work, I don’t want to fill it out.”

    Get around this by starting with simple questions that have yes/no or multiple-choice answers. If you have more complex questions you want to ask clients, put them toward the end of the survey. If a client knows they’re almost done, they’re more likely to answer, and less likely to quit early. Some survey platforms even track progress and estimated time remaining, though to benefit from these trackers you need to ensure your survey really is brief.

  4. Use software that makes your life easier.

    These days there are a number of different tools you can use to build a survey; SurveyMonkey and TypeForm are two firms designed just for surveys. A number of CRMs also give you the option to run a survey; HubSpot and MailChimp both offer this feature, for example. Advyzon also offers a tool to help with client surveys: Fact Finder.

    Fact Finder was designed to help with prospecting, but it can also be adapted and used with existing clients to help you survey them. (If you’re curious how this works, schedule a demo, and we can walk you through it.)

    Which software you use may depend on the first three steps in this article. If you decide you’re using the survey internally and you want to drill down on different segments within your clients, you might want to create logic flows, where how you answer a question determines the next question the respondent sees. So, you’d need to make sure the technology you’re using allows for logic flows.

    Most of the time, it’s possible to create a good client survey with whatever technology you have easily available to you; unless you’re planning to send a lot of questionnaires, it probably isn’t worth searching for (or worse, paying for) a new set of software.


If you have more questions about how to set up a client survey using Advyzon Fact Finder, schedule a demo.

Written by John Mackowiak