Whether you’re an accountant, graphic designer, copywriter, real estate agent, or interior designer, it always serves you well to spend a decent amount of time on client discovery — that means asking your clients everything and anything you can think of to help you deliver better service.
If you’re spending ages manually pulling information out of email threads or can’t get your clients to send you basic information on time, it’s time for a client organizer.
In this post, we’ll go over:
- The disadvantages of using email for client communication
- The benefits of using a client organizer
- Popular client organizers on the market and how they compare.
Let’s dig in!
What is a client organizer?
A client organizer is a tool you can use to streamline the process of gathering essential data from new clients. Client organizers can come in a few different formats, like paper-based forms, electronic documents, or online platforms.
Client organizers include sections or prompts for clients to provide specific details about themselves. For financial services, a client organizer might ask for client data like income, expenses, assets, liabilities, tax data, and other relevant information. For other professional services, the prompts might ask for anything else that’s relevant to the success of the project like client preferences and goals.
Gathering information through the help of a client organizer ensures you have all the necessary information you need to tailor your service to the needs of a particular client accordingly.
What are the benefits of using a client organizer?
Client organizers help you organize information in a structured format. They also serve as a powerful tool that facilitates discussions between you and your client.
By using a client organizer, you can get better at:
- Communicating and collaborating with your clients on projects more effectively
- Speeding up your project workflows so they get done faster
- Finding the information you need faster when you need it
- Delivering more effective solutions that better address specific client needs.
Why is a client organizer a better way to collect client data than email?
If you still rely on email to collect client data, consider how often you run into the following issues:
- Clients miss your emails and never get back to you.
- Clients can’t send you information like large documents or images due to file size limitations.
- You receive the wrong information and have to send additional emails to get what you need.
- You lose plenty of time in your day on emailing back and forth.
- You have a hard time finding the information you need when you need it because it’s scattered across multiple email threads.
If any of these sound like frustrations you experience as you run your business, using a modern communication tool like a client organizer will do you well.
Don’t forget that a client organizer can even have multiple uses. You can use one to collect information for onboarding, collect customer feedback, or conduct surveys.
What are some of the best client organizers?
Online client organizers often come in the form of form builders. Here are a few of our top picks and why we recommend them.
1. Content Snare
Content Snare is a user-friendly client organizer used by professionals across industries from accounting to coaching and event planning. It allows you to build customized questionnaires for your clients to fill out before you start on a project. Alternatively, you can choose from questionnaire templates that spare you plenty of time building one from scratch,
Sometimes clients send over the wrong information, documents, or versions of client data. Content Snare helps you fix such issues on the spot with its built-in approve/reject features. If something is wrong with the information you receive, you can use these features to notify the client to re-send or update their information.
Content Snare comes in handy because it also allows you to set up automatic reminders to make sure your clients complete your questionnaire on time. When setting up your form, you can choose a deadline and the tool will do the rest!
One thing to note is that Content Snare might not give you all the features you’re looking for if you’re looking for your client organizer to do things like analyze dropoffs or conversions. It mostly functions as a tool that helps you collect data, not analyze it in detail.
PRICING
Content Snare plans range from $29 USD/month for 2 users up to $79 USD/month for 20+ users.
2. Typeform
Typeform is a popular online form builder known for its user-friendly interface and conversational approach to collecting client information. It offers various advantages such as ease of use, multiple template options, and intuitive form-building.
Typeform is a good option to go for if you aren’t looking for very many customization options or advanced features, but as a result, you might end up missing out on some features that you’d find helpful, at least on the basic plan.
Unlike Content Snare, Typeform doesn’t allow you to respond to client data as it comes in and won’t help you remind clients to complete your request on time.
If you are looking for analysis features like drop-off analysis and conversion tracking, then you can get them on an upgraded plan.
PRICING
Typeform plans start at $20 USD/month for 1 user up to $83 USD/month for 5 users.
3. Zoho Forms
Zoho Forms stands out as a versatile client organizer that caters to various industries. One of its notable features is its user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, enabling effortless creation and customization of surveys and form templates, even for users with limited technical skills.
Zoho Forms is kind of an in-between between Content Snare and Typeform. If you want additional features, opting for a higher price plan will unlock functionalities like approvals and tasks.
PRICING
Zoho Forms plans start at $10/month for 1 user up to $90/month for 100 users.
It’s time to start exploring!
We hope this post got you thinking about some of the ways a client organizer can help your business collect and manage a wide range of information, improve your offering and enhance customer satisfaction. To figure out which tool is best for you, we recommend signing up for their free trials and seeing for yourself!
