Using online forms for customer service is a great way to interact with your customers – if you are doing it the right way! People often times shy away from submitting their information into an online form because they believe they are not contacting a real person and therefore they won’t be receiving a response, especially right away.
There are several key things for you to do so your online form doesn’t become a dead zone on your site.
Set Expectations:
First, place a short message above the form letting your customer know details about what will happen after they submit their information. By being upfront about the level of service they can expect they will have a realistic time frame and won’t make assumptions about how the information will be processed.
Be Smart:
Make sure the form is being submitted to the correct person so that the form can be responded to. Smart Routing allows the form to be routed to the proper person or team based on information that is selected in the form. For instance, if you have a lead generation form for three different regions, East Coast, Mid West and West Coast, you can route proper submissions to each areas sales manager. Making sure that the information is handled by the proper person and information can be acted upon much quicker.
Take Action:
Last, take action! Make sure you stay true to your word and let customers know you are really behind that form and are ready to help them.
How We Do It
At Formstack, above our customer support form we tell the customer that someone will contact them as soon as possible – always within 24 hours in our case. We also give them other options of contacting us if they aren’t comfortable filling out the online form. After the form has been submitted, a screen pops up telling them thank you and we will contact them right away just so they are even more confident that we will reply.
By following all of these key items your customers will trust that you will always reply when they fill out y our form and also decrease your chances of your form from becoming a dead zone.
Using online forms for customer service is a great way to interact with your customers – if you are doing it the right way! People often times shy away from submitting their information into an online form because they believe they are not contacting a real person and therefore they won’t be receiving a response, especially right away.
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