Find Out What Your Customers Are Thinking For Less

You Don’t Need a Madison Avenue Consultant to Get the Pulse of Your Customers

Many companies use them. In fact, large corporations spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to put a finger on the pulse of what their customers think about their products. Thanks to a number of online services, you can learn the same information for a lot less.

Poll Your Clients and Keep Your Tax Practice on a Budget

LinkedIn (Linked-In), a Palo Alto based company, offers networking tools over the Internet. To keep track of the 3.5 million registered users, LinkedIn’s co-founder Konstantin Guericke, polls 20,000 to 30,000 of their subscribers each month using an online service called Zoomerang.

For only $599 per year, he keeps his finger on the pulse of what his customers are thinking.

Last year, LinkedIn tried to convince more users to upgrade their LinkedIn accounts. Drawing upon some anecdotal feedback, he thought the answer was to allow his customers to add photographs to their site profiles, but he wanted to check his hunch. He sent out a Zoomerang survey that asked users to pick their favorite from a list of possible new LinkedIn features. The list included things like photographs, discussion forums, and a new search function.

80% of his subscribers chose the search function, compared to 50% or so who voted for the photographs. The following month they added the search function and doubled the number of active users over the following 6 or 7 months.

Where Can I Locate These Services?

Zoomerang (www.zoomerang.com), is the market leader, but there are other services that you can investigate. Below is a list of the biggest players. (If you are interested in seeing what they specifically have to offer, simply click on the link and it will take you to their site.)

• Zoomerang
• EZqustionaire
• KeySurvey
• Survey Monkey

How Can Any of These Services Help Me Build My Tax Practice?

There are a number of ways that polling your client list helps you laser target your marketing efforts. Ask questions like:

1. What business hours are more convenient to your clients?
2. Should you be open on Saturdays?
3. Is electronic filing of taxes important to your clients?
4. Would they be interested in additional bookkeeping services?
5. Anything else you’d like to know about your clients.

This is by no means a complete list. Keeping in touch with your clients like this takes the guess-work out of your product offerings and your marketing. You may even be surprised to find out that many of your clients enjoy working with you so much, they’re willing to increase the number of services you provide for them.

However, be aware that sometimes the most valuable information comes in the form of a criticism. You’re clients will not only tell you where you’re doing a good job, but they’ll tell you where you’re falling down on the job too. Sometimes we need to take the bitter with the sweet.

Pay attention to your customers comments and you’ll build a tax preparation business that will generate the income and lifestyle that you deserve. Click HERE to learn how to pay attention to the details and give your clients reasons to stay with you.