Advisors: If you’re only using client surveys to measure satisfaction and retention, you’re missing powerful opportunities to unlock insights that could transform your firm.

While satisfaction and retention are undeniably important metrics, and critical for advisors to regularly track, they don’t answer two of the most eye-opening questions advisors should be asking: Why? and How?

As an already time-strapped advisor, if you’re going to go through the effort of putting together a client survey, asking your clients to fill it out, gathering responses, and aggregating the answers, don’t you want the most impactful information possible?

We’ve seen advisors use surveys with great success to accomplish the following three business objectives:

1. Introducing New Service Opportunities

The move toward more holistic financial services offerings is ongoing. Today’s clients are increasingly interested in bringing their full financial picture together in one place. And if you’re not asking them what else they might want you to manage for them, you’re forcing them to take their business elsewhere.

This doesn’t just apply to uncovering held-away assets you could be bringing under your purview, either:

• If you work with business owners, they might be interested in valuation services.
• Cutting-edge technology now enables advisors to confidently offer estate planning, which also opens up the opportunity to start having conversations with the next generation of clients.
• And, of course, tax preparation and planning is often top of mind for investors. Even if you’re not able to offer those services yourself, knowing your clients are interested in them sets you up to build centers of influence relationships with CPA partners.

Questions to consider asking:

• What, if anything, do you think is missing from the services we provide?
• What are the top 3 services you wish we offered?
• If you’re working with other financial professionals, are you satisfied with the service you’re receiving? Would you consider changing providers if we could meet those service needs?
• How can we improve the level of service we offer you?

2. Improving Marketing Efforts

Customer insights are the foundation of any successful marketing strategy. Across every niche and industry, understanding your clients remains the best — and some might say only — way to reach new ones.

Surveys can be a secret weapon for unlocking information straight from your clients about what you do well, what sets you apart in the industry, and what you’ve helped them accomplish.

Following compliance protocol, you can certainly use these responses as testimonials. Still, you can also leverage client insights to build powerful messaging across your marketing platforms, from your website to social media to emails.

You may even come away with ideas for webinars or blog posts — after all, if you’ve helped your current clients unwind the complexities of higher education retirement planning (for example), chances are other prospective clients would benefit from that information too.

Questions to consider asking:

• How did you feel about your financial situation before we started working together? How do you feel now?
• What do you think has been the most valuable aspect of our work together and why?
• What have you learned from our engagement?
• What could we do to serve you better?

3. Optimizing Time

Much has been made about advisors not having enough time to spend with their clients. And while that certainly may be true in many cases, does it apply to you and your clients?

The implication is that more time spent with clients equals stronger relationships.

It’s solid logic, but it’s also a broad generalization. For example, if your niche is surgeons with young children, it’s unlikely they have much extra time to spend with you. They may prefer an annual meeting cadence with check-ins via email rather than three to four in-person meetings yearly.

Either way, Why not ask them?

Don’t guess. Use real survey data to find out how, when, and how often they prefer to communicate with you. This doesn’t just apply to meetings, either; would you still spend the time putting together 50+ page reports if you knew no one was reading them?

Equipped with knowledge about what your clients truly want from your time, you can allocate it accordingly.

Questions to consider asking:

• How many times a year would you like to meet with our team?
• Do you prefer in-person or virtual meetings?
• What do you find to be the most beneficial aspect of our meetings?
• What would you change, if anything, about our methods of communication?
• Are you satisfied with the level of reporting you receive?
• Would you prefer more detailed information or a higher-level summary?

Go Beyond Client Satisfaction

Client insights are the most powerful tool for growing and elevating your business. Don’t stop at mere satisfaction ratings; use clients as a resource to improve what you offer, how you offer it, and how you communicate it to the market.

For more information about how NEXA Insights enables financial advisors to create, deploy, and gather insights from custom client surveys, contact our team at info@nexainsights.com.