Collect client intake information 50% faster

Collecting client intake information often starts with a simple client intake form.

You send it to a new client—basic stuff: name, address, a few checkboxes, maybe a document upload or two. Nothing complicated. But three days later, you’re still chasing down missing pieces.

Your client downloaded the form, filled it out halfway, scanned it sideways, skipped two pages, uploaded the wrong ID, and missed the email asking for a signature.

Your inbox? A mix of apologies, “just following up” messages, and files like Scan_409_FINAL_final2.pdf.

By the time you’ve gathered everything, you can feel that your client engagement has started to drop. And honestly? You and your staff have probably lost a bit of momentum too.

We’ve seen this story play out hundreds of times.

At Clustdoc, our users working at law firms for example, come to us with the same frustrations: intake processes that are too manual, too slow, too unreliable. And while the tools they were using might have worked at one point, they no longer keep up with the pace of today’s business.

We built Clustdoc to fix that. In this article, I’ll show you how professionals like you collect client intake information up to 50% faster—and how you can do the same by applying a few simple best practices to your intake process.

Why your client intake process is slowing you down

Let me describe the typical intake process: if you’re like most teams, it probably involves some combination of email exchanges, PDFs, Excel sheets, and possibly even physical documents.

You might even chase down clients multiple times to remind them about missing contact information or incomplete forms.

This is a reality for many, and this is also still quite critical for a business.

When your team members spend hours manually gathering intake details, it creates bottlenecks.

These bottlenecks cause delays, costing you actual business opportunities.

Prospective clients book an appointment or request an initial consultation, expecting quick service, but instead find themselves buried in cumbersome, unclear procedures.

Let’s discover how you can fix that.

Four best practices to accelerate your client intake process

The good news is that fixing these inefficiencies doesn’t require massive overhauls or complex training programs.

Here are four proven ways to drastically speed up your intake process.

Automate document collection and reminders

Manually collecting documents from clients is both time-consuming and prone to errors, not to mention that it doesn’t make sense anymore in a world that survived almost 3 years of social distancing.

On the contrary, automating your client intake form collection process completely changes this dynamic.

With automation, you can set up tailored workflows that request specific supporting documents and details at precise intervals. Clients automatically receive helpful reminders when submissions are due or incomplete.

This reduces administrative hassle significantly – you could free yourself from constantly chasing after potential new clients or digging through emails to retrieve missing contact information.

Tools like Clustdoc automate reminders and document requests seamlessly.

You can effortlessly manage client workflows from a centralized dashboard, instantly cutting out the back-and-forth that slows your team members down.

Create a centralized client intake portal

Another common bottleneck occurs when client intake information is scattered across different platforms such as emails, cloud drives, spreadsheets, and even physical folders.

By centralizing all your intake forms and client data into one secure portal, you immediately remove friction.

Clients can clearly see exactly what you need from them, whether it’s a phone number, a fee agreement, or basic information, and you get instant access to submitted data.

Clustdoc provides a user-friendly, centralized platform specifically designed to simplify the overall client intake process.

It improves how legal professionals and teams in similar industries onboard new clients. No more confusion, no more lost forms—just a smooth, professional client experience for both you and your team members.

Consider implementing forms automation

Complicated onboarding intake forms can significantly slow down your process. Clients often postpone submitting required details simply because the client intake form feels overwhelming.

Making your forms clear, concise, and easy to navigate can drastically improve client response times.

The use of dynamic online forms instead of sending PDFs or email attachments would allow potential new clients to submit their information quickly and accurately before the initial consultation and even after.

Ideally, the solution you decide to pick should have auto-fill capabilities, templates, password protection, and conditional logic to guide clients through the process without unnecessary friction.

For example, instead of making them submit the necessary details repeatedly, an intelligent system should automatically populate known information and only show relevant fields based on their responses.

If you want something a bit more advanced, you may want to look for a system that can provide you with some form of logic or branching capabilities, so your customers can navigate from one form to another easily.

This way, you can build great intake forms and organize them to capture different types of data: basic information, financial history, etc.

On your side, this would also help you break down data into more comprehensive clusters that are easier for your staff to review or retrieve.

Using such a feature, you could collect intake information from both individuals or companies in a workflow. If a client selects “self-employed,” in your contact information form, the system would then automatically mask the business-related form, and you wouldn’t even have to skim through this part during your review process.

Clustdoc’s intuitive interface is designed with simplicity at its core.

It allows clients to submit accurate data in minutes, reducing friction and making it easier for you to assess whether the client is a good fit for your services.

Track client’s progress in real-time

Nothing delays a process more than a lack of visibility.

If you don’t know where clients are getting stuck, you can’t proactively help them move forward, but unfortunately, emails would never provide such insights.

Real-time tracking helps you pinpoint problems before they become bottlenecks. You can see when clients have opened your emails, started completing their client intake form, or skipped critical fields or documents.

Clustdoc offers built-in dashboards and automated status updates, giving your team members full visibility at every stage of the client intake process. This added layer of transparency allows you to act quickly and keep everything moving smoothly.

How a leading benefits administration firm cut client intake time by 50%

To put these ideas into perspective, let’s look at a real-world example.

One of our customers in the benefits administration space was no stranger to this. With thousands of clients and brokers relying on them, their internal teams were overwhelmed by the slow, manual document collection process.

Paper forms. Email threads. Zero visibility.

Everyone involved including clients, partners, internal staff, was frustrated.

They knew something had to change.

After implementing Clustdoc, the results were dramatic.

They automated follow-ups, replaced static forms with dynamic, branded intake experiences, and centralized file collection and tracking into a single dashboard.

The impact?

Their client onboarding time was cut in half.

What used to take up to three months for larger clients now takes just six weeks, without hiring additional staff.

The internal team not only saved time—they also restored confidence among brokers and clients, who now enjoy a smooth, guided onboarding experience from day one.

That’s the kind of operational upgrade that looks good and feels good across the board.

Getting started with collecting client intake information faster

If you’re thinking, “This sounds great, but how can I implement it right now?”, I am here to help.

Start by reviewing your current client intake process.

Identify common delays:

• are clients unclear about what intake forms to fill out or documents to submit?

• do they forget to send their contact information or miss an email reminder?

Next, upgrade your process with an intake software that’s designed to solve these exact issues.

Clustdoc gives you everything you need in one place: a branded web page for client intake, customizable templates for forms and required documents, automated workflows, and expert onboarding help if needed.

You don’t need to wait for your next quarterly planning cycle. You can begin streamlining your automated client intake process this week—and start seeing results just as quickly.

Conclusion

The faster you collect client intake information, the sooner you can serve new clients, close deals, and scale your business. Manual processes create delays that hurt both your bottom line and your client experience.

By implementing automation, centralizing your intake forms, simplifying your workflow, and tracking client’s progress in real-time, you can turn a frustrating process into a competitive advantage.

Clustdoc was built to help small business owners and their teams improve the way they manage client intake.

If you’re looking to reduce errors, speed up onboarding, and impress potential clients, we’ll be here to help you implement best practices and make the switch.

Get to know Clustdoc

Clustdoc is a professional Client Onboarding and Verification Software.

Many teams use Clustdoc to orchestrate, run and manage repeated industry-specific onboarding workflows with clients or stakeholders:

– Automate routine workflows – no more paper documents
– Get rid of manual tasks and decrease approval lag time
– Stop chasing data and files across multiple tools
– Improve customer engagement and satisfaction

Marie

Marie is the voice of the customer at Clustdoc, she loves guiding businesses toward clarity in their processes and client interactions for better performance and peace of mind.

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