To lead into this post, let me ask you a quick question. Do you, as a photographer, have a system in place to really find out from your clients how satisfied or thrilled they were with the experience of working with you?
If the answer is “no” then you could be missing out on a vital piece of the “success puzzle” for your photography business.
A necessary component of most complex systems is a feedback mechanism to either keep the system in check or to make a process more efficient over time. Without feedback, we can’t learn and it makes improvement harder.
For example, if a child touches something hot, the feedback of pain provides the necessary information for her to learn not to do that again.
It’s the same with our business – we need feedback from our clients to understand how well we’re doing. By feedback, I don’t mean a passing comment when you hand over the prints (“I love these”, “these are awesome”) and basic things like that. I mean a systemized approach to information gathering that can really tell us over time how we’re doing, but that also allows the client to say what they really feel without worrying about upsetting us or hurting our feelings.
If you’ve shied away from doing something like this because you feel your clients won’t respond or, worse still, that all they’ll do is complain, then you need to get over it and understand that if you don’t know a problem exists, how can you hope to fix it?
Your Web Site To The Rescue
So how do we go about getting this valuable feedback? We could call them on the phone or email them, which might be better than nothing, but it’s not very consistent or organized, and the information is difficult to collect and store. This is where your web site can come to the rescue. All you need is a single web page with a form on it, which your clients can fill out at their leisure, which sends you an email with the captured data, together with a “thank-you” email to the client.
It’s as simple as that. You can either code the form yourself, have your webmaster do it for you, or you could handle it through www.wufoo.com. It doesn’t matter how you do it, it’s the information you extract from it that counts.
If you want to take a look at the form I use, you can find it here. I’m more than happy to share with you how this is coded, and what happens after they click the “submit” button. If you have a web server that supports PHP, the code that delivers the emails with the form responses is pretty straightforward. If you need help with that, email me, and I’ll do what I can.
Some Observations
My observation so far is that clients are more likely to be honest when they’re typing their answers into a form on a screen than they might be if you talked to them on the phone or in person. The web form makes it a little less personal and they probably feel more comfortable being forthright with you.
This is also the perfect place to get a testimonial from your client (if you haven’t already done so). I get most of my client testimonials this way, and they come across to the reader as much more genuine-sounding than any testimonials we may write for the client (which they approve, by the way – never use a testimonial that a client hasn’t seen or agreed to, if they didn’t write it themselves).
This system is fun to use and it’s a great morale booster when you receive the results and see how much your clients really do care about you and appreciate your work. Just because they’re not burning up your phone to tell you in person, doesn’t mean they aren’t thrilled.
It also helps to strengthen feelings of trust in your clients towards your brand. By demonstrating that you care about them and their experience with you, their sense of loyalty towards you can be multiplied.
What To Ask
The sky’s the limit here, and you can ask almost anything you want to know the answer to. Don’t be afraid of asking too many questions. As long as the answers can be simplified and the form can be completed in about 5 minutes, you should be okay. Here’s a list of the questions I have on my form, for example:
- Name…
- Adddress…
- Phone number…
- Email…
- What type of photography did we do for them…
- Are they a “fan” of our Facebook page?
- Please tell us why they hired us in the first place…
- Overall, how thrilled were they (on a scale of 1 to 5)…
- What was the major factor for the answer to the above?
- Would you recommend us to friends and family?
- Tell us how we did (this is what we use as the testimonial)…
- Would you be interested in our newsletter?
- Any other comments or suggestions…
I’m sure you can think of others to add to the list.
For questions with simple multiple answers, use radio buttons. Text boxes are great for extended responses (testimonial, comments etc.). Otherwise, simple text entry fields work just fine.
If you’re a true professional who cares about your clients and the quality of your work, I promise you that you’ll be surprised at some of the responses you receive and you will be emotionally touched by the things people say about you and your work. I can’t think of a better confidence booster right now than knowing that someone out there truly values and loves what we do.
What Do We Do With The Unhappy Ones?
On those few occasions when someone isn’t 100% happy with the way things went, then learn from the lesson, take what they have to say impersonally and work to fix the problem. Then, call that client on the phone (don’t be tempted to take the easy way out and email them) and explain to them how useful their feedback was, thank them for helping you, and offer to do something for them that would make them feel better about you and your services. Under no circumstances would I advise calling them up to argue the point or attempt to justify the problem. If you behave in a professional manner and treat your clients with kindness (yes, even when you think they are being unreasonable), this will set you apart from your competition by miles!
I’m sure you can recall more than one bad experience with a company or service where they’ve asked for your feedback and you really let them have it! How many of those companies took the time to personally call you to thank you for helping them to improve and to ask for the opportunity to give them another go? How would you feel if they did, and how might it affect how you felt about them?
Just Do It!
In closing, my advice to you is as simple: just do it. It’s easy to set up, very straightforward to implement, and the results will speak for themselves.
Good luck with it, and I’ll talk to you again soon.
Motivation client experience survey, client feedback, client relationship, professional photography
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