Doing surveys with your clients is a great way to get feedback after a program and many of us are used to using them just that way. We hand out surveys and assessments at the end of a one-hour workshop, a three-month program, or any other time our work with someone is complete.
The information you can gather with this type of survey is extremely valuable, but it is important to remember that you will be receiving it after the fact. Why not give them a survey right now? Surveying your participants mid-program can yield an abundance of other benefits for yourself, and for them.
When you survey your clients while they are still working with you, you can improve the benefits they get from your program. Just by asking them NOW about their experience while working with you they will receive:
- A chance to get honest about how well they are contributing to their own progress;
- An opportunity to re-commit to the work you are doing together;
- A reminder about all of the value they are getting while working with you;
- A chance to contribute back to you, and
- A glimpse into how far they have come… and how YOU helped them to do it!
When you survey your current clients, you will get all of the standard useful information for improving your program, along with many other benefits you can use right away:
- Have fun and get creative again about your program while you design the survey;
- Re-energize yourself in your work with your client when your survey enables you to connect with them in a new, out-of-the routine way;
- Capture their words when they answer your survey, which is the most powerful marketing language you can have;
- Receive testimonials about their work with you that you can use in your marketing;
- Uncover possible challenges within your program that you can now address and repair mid-stream;
- Discover benefits that you are giving your clients that you were not even aware of yourself;
- Engage with your client and keep yourself and your program top of mind in a different way than usual;
- Assess how well they are working independently with your content on their own time;
- Ask them for referrals to your program, and
- Plant the seeds with them to re-enroll with you!
These are just some of the benefits of taking a few minutes to design a small survey to interact with your clients while they are still working with you, instead of waiting until the end of your time together. If you are worried about the cost of designing a survey, a quick search online will show you that there are dozens of free tools you can use to begin your customer survey journey. No more excuses!
It’s survey time!
Sarah
