Using Questionnaire for Your Client Intake Process

Would that be a perfect world if your clients and you could be on the same page at the start of your design projects? Using questionnaires for your client intake process allows you to cut the start times in half. You will look extremely organized and professional. That first impression is important.

No more “I told you that if I recall”

How many revisions did you had to do because of sparse information / requirements across phone conversations, emails and paper notes? Having a referable and always accessible questionnaire with answers can greatly improve the first design proposition. Ideally, it would save you to get back and forth for aspects that would have been unclear or forgotten without a questionnaire.

Using reusable question sets for the same project types will let you save time managing the new clients and puts more time designing. Every project is different, but the first steps and initial information are fairly similar to same project type like logo design or landing page.

They know their stuff or have a good idea

You can show an awesome design creation to a client, but if it’s not meeting their needs and expectations, you would have waste both of your time. Let them think hard about what they really want by asking the right questions. Expectations tend to be more precise when you need to write them.

The answers given will help you draft the first estimate as well by including the dreadful question “What is your budget?” and such. You will obtain more detailed answers compared to a phone or a document written by the client. Force them to reveal almost exactly what they want to pay for then do it. Hopefully, the amount of revisions would be lower and the first proposition could be a winner.

Questionnaires are not replacing communication with your client

Of course you should still put some quality time over the phone or whatever you normally do. You will have to find the best moment to introduce the questionnaire to new clients. Optimizing your client intake process will let you grow your business while doing what you love the most.

The questionnaire generated by Osmosis allow the client to fill them at their own pace. They can take pauses and continue later or the next day. All answers are automatically saved, and you can even start looking at answers in real-time. Once the client complete the questionnaire they cannot change it anymore, but the answers are always available. We are currently working on the next step which is creating a contract based on the questionnaire, but this is for a later blog post.