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Running a Survey using BOMA

Client feedback is one of the most underused assets in accounting and bookkeeping practices. Most firms have an instinct for what clients want, but few have hard data to confirm it. A simple survey changes that, and sending a Google Form using BOMA is the easiest way to build one without any technical setup or cost.

Using Google Forms to Survey Your Clients and Putting the Results to Work with BOMA

 

This guide walks through creating a client survey in Google Forms, then shows how to get more value out of the responses by distributing the survey and acting on the results through BOMA, the marketing platform built specifically for accounting and bookkeeping firms.

Why Survey Your Clients at All

Before opening Google Forms, it's worth being clear on the goal. A short, well-targeted survey can tell you which services clients actually value, what's confusing them about your pricing or processes, which topics they'd want to read about in a newsletter, or how likely they are to refer you to someone else. That last data point alone (a Net Promoter Score question) is often the single most useful number a firm can track quarterly.

The output of the survey isn't just a report sitting in a spreadsheet. The real value comes from using what you learn to shape the content and campaigns you send clients afterward, which is where BOMA comes in later in this guide.

Step-by-Step: Building a Survey in Google Forms

1. Open Google Forms

Sign in to your Google account and go to forms.google.com. Alternatively, open Google Drive, click New, then More, and select Google Forms.

2. Start a New Form

Choose Blank form, or pick a template if one matches your needs (Google includes a few generic feedback and event templates, though none are accounting-specific). This opens an editable form where you can begin adding questions.

3. Title and Describe the Survey

Give the form a clear title, for example "2026 Client Feedback Survey" or "Tell Us What You Need This Tax Season." Add a short description explaining why you're asking and roughly how long it will take to complete. Clients are more likely to finish a survey when they know upfront it's two minutes, not twenty.

4. Add Your Questions

Click the + icon to add a question, and choose the format that fits: multiple choice, checkboxes, linear scale, or short answer are the most useful for client feedback. A few formats worth using deliberately:

  • Linear scale (1–10) for satisfaction or likelihood-to-refer questions
  • Multiple choice for "which service mattered most to you this year"
  • Short answer for one open-ended question only, such as "what's one thing we could do better"

Mark essential questions as Required so you don't end up with incomplete responses on the data points that matter most.

5. Customize the Look

Use the Customize theme option (the paint palette icon) to add your firm's logo, brand colors, and a header image. A branded form feels more credible to clients than a generic-looking Google form, and takes only a minute to set up.

6. Preview Before Sending

Click the eye icon in the top right to preview the form exactly as a respondent will see it. Check it on a phone screen too, since most clients will open it from an email on mobile.

7. Share the Survey

Click Send. You can share a direct link, send it by email through Forms itself, or embed it on your website. For client surveys, a tracked link sent through your own email or social channels usually performs better than Google's built-in email sender, since it arrives from an address clients already recognize and trust. This is the step where BOMA becomes useful, more on that below, but for now you can click the "Copy Responder Link" to copy the URL to share in BOMA, or click "Share" to specify who can respond to the survey (e.g. if you were sending it internally to staff or other Google groups).

8. Collect and Review Responses

Responses populate in real time under the Responses tab, with automatic summary charts for multiple-choice and scale questions. For deeper analysis, click the Sheets icon to export responses into Google Sheets, where you can filter, sort, or build pivot tables.

Tips for a Survey Clients Will Actually Finish

A few principles consistently improve completion rates. Keep questions short and specific rather than broad or jargon-heavy. Limit the survey to 5–8 questions wherever possible; anything longer sees a sharp drop-off in completion. Use Forms' Sections and conditional "go to section based on answer" logic so clients only see questions relevant to them, rather than wading through irrelevant ones. And always end with one open text field so clients who want to say more have the chance to.

Turning Survey Results Into Client Communication with BOMA

This is the step most firms skip, and it's the one that turns a survey from a one-off feedback exercise into an ongoing marketing asset.

Once you have responses, two things typically emerge: a list of topics clients say they care about, and a clearer sense of how clients prefer to hear from you. BOMA is a marketing platform built for accounting and bookkeeping firms, with a content library written by chartered accountants and financial journalists covering tax, compliance, advisory, and growth topics, which makes it a natural next step once a survey tells you what clients actually want covered.

A practical workflow looks like this:

  • Distribute the survey. Rather than relying on Forms' own email sender, build the announcement as an email or social post inside BOMA and send it to your client list, since BOMA lets firms create and schedule email and social campaigns, including pre-built templates, and reach clients across email, Facebook, LinkedIn, and X from one platform. This also means the survey invite looks consistent with the rest of your client communications rather than arriving as a generic Google notification.
  • Capture interested leads alongside the survey. If you're also using the survey to reach prospects rather than only existing clients, BOMA's lead capture forms can collect contact details and automatically add them to your email list, so new contacts who engage with the survey link don't fall through the cracks.
  • Act on what you learn. If the survey shows clients want more guidance on, say, cash flow or upcoming compliance changes, you don't need to write that content from scratch. BOMA's library includes country-specific content across tax and compliance, finance and cashflow, business strategy, technology, people, and ESG topics, each tied to the relevant tax authority for Australia, New Zealand, or the UK. Pull the article matching the topic clients flagged, customize it to your firm's voice, and send it as a direct response to what the survey told you.
  • Close the loop. A short follow-up campaign ("you told us, here's what we're doing about it") sent through BOMA reinforces to clients that the survey wasn't just a box-ticking exercise, which meaningfully improves response rates on the next one.

In Summary

Google Forms remains the fastest, free way to build the survey itself: it takes less than fifteen minutes from blank form to shareable link. The value multiplies once the results feed into how you actually talk to clients afterward. By distributing the survey and following up through BOMA, firms can turn a single round of feedback into an ongoing content and communication strategy, rather than a spreadsheet that gets reviewed once and forgotten.