11 replies to this topic

[air-dog]

Hi All,

You know the one, you fill in the form on a web page and click send. A page is returned and it say ' Thanks, your message has been sent'.

Now I believe that a good message is more then just polite, Its good customer service. How you write a message probably wont make any difference with the search engines but, in my mind, it still is an important part of writing copy for a website.

I cant put my finger on it but when I fill in a form and send my details I always feel cheated if the all I get for my trouble is 'Thanks, we will get back to you ASAP'.

Not very creative is it? I probably wont be checking my inbox every hour, anticipating the arrival of an interesting and informative email.

Anyway, I was wondering If any of you would like to share ideas or have seen some good techniques used on a website response pages.

(The description at the top was meant to read:Seen any good techniques? contact pages........ sorry )

Edited by air-dog, 08 September 2003 - 12:07 PM.

[Vertster]

I think you want to be as specific as possible. One of the problems on the web, is that what people write tends to be very general in nature. This fills up the page, but tells the reader very little.

Response pages should offer very specific information, about when the person will be gotten back to. In addition, personalizing the message is a very good idea, and is easy to do.

Its also an opportunity to set expectations. This is the first interaction you are having with a potential customer. Better get off to a good start! Tell them when they will hear from you, and then exceed their expectation. If you are going to call them, then let them know. If you are going to correspond by email, let them know.

[deborah2002]

Hi, Air Dog!
We use the "Thank you for your order" thing, and then the page is a copy of their order, along with full office details (Mon-Fri 9/5, phone numbers, address, email, etc.).

Our guests like this because most of them don't bother to download the map to our office for package pick up. This email reminds them to do so. It also speaks to the folks who have opted for hotel delivery, that they will have the package waiting at the front desk by 4 PM on the date of their arrival. It's a pretty comprehensive email, without being too wordy.

Then again, I have come to the conclusion that some people, no matter how much info you give them, just refuse to read them. I have people calling me all the time with their invoices in their hands asking "did you receive my order?" . Never fails.

deb

[Haystack]

We work on the assumption that visitors have accomplished what we wanted them to do, and are probably done with what they wanted to do are our site after filling out the contact form. So we thank them for contacting us, let them know when they can expect to hear from us, and give them a few suggestions of related sites they may find interesting (which may or may not be affiliate linked.

[sheriw]

Steve,
You're right, form messages don't take any thought or creativity, and don't communicate any warmth at all. But we receive them become busy people decided to stay with what their web host provides, or dashed off an email that took three minutes to write.
I love receiving more personalized responses, such as the ones mentioned above. It lets me know that my order is being processed by real, live human beings who care about customer service.

"Thank you for your order-it's really appreciated! You should be hearing back from one of our representatives in the next 48 hours. In the meantime, if you have any questions about your order, you can reach us at 555-555-5555.
Sincerely,
(person's name)

I like having a phone number I can call, if I have a question or concern about the order, or need to reach a real, live person at the company. It's another little extra example of "CRM in action" on the Web, where we often forget we have phone numbers and that some customers actually like to talk to us...

Best wishes,
Sheri

[air-dog]

Thanks all,

Some really good input so far. These are just the sort of posts I was hoping for.

I get asked to do response forms all the time, many of my clients are traditional design company’s trying to make the crossover to the Internet. I hardly ever have any influence over the message that is supplied to the user after form filling and it never ceases to amaze me how little effort is put into it.

like Vertster said

Its also an opportunity to set expectations. This is the first interaction you are having with a potential customer.

So why do many company’s think they can get away with 'Thanks, goodbye'? It seems to me that too much priority is spent on the flash movie rather then customer service

The uses and ideas that have been discussed so far are like a breath of fresh air.

Something I like to use that is not unlike what Haystack has mentioned;

and give them a few suggestions of related sites they may find interesting

Is PDF downloads links with free advice, If I get my say, I sometimes suggest this to the client. As for the message itself I have a habit of writing too much and end up thinking I’ve patronized the user so I make it shorter and end up back at square one so its good to hear all your uses and points of view.

Thanks again.

[mopacfan]

Air-dog,

I really hate not getting any meaningful feedback when I submit a form as well. For our new site that's going live in a few weeks, I decided to keep the 'thank you' message simple but it's populated with the respondents name to add some personalization. In addition, to provide meaningful feedback, the asp page sends a confirmation email to the respondent with the complete dialog of the form they posted. This way the customer has positive feedback, knowing that all of his/her information was captured and transmitted properly, as well as knowing someone will respond in a short period of time.

I then take it one step further. To let the customer know we haven't forgotten about them, because the data is stored in SQL, a script automatically sends out a follow up email 10 days after the original request. This message asks if they recieved the samples, were they satisfied, is there anything else we can to serve them and to please call us with any questions or concerns.

This way, we don't have to rely on the customer service folks to follow up (which we know is very iffy) and the customer feels that they are important and not forgotten.

Ciao

[copywriter]

Excellent idea here! My form returns a message that states the following:


Thank you!

Your message has been sent. We appreciate your correspondence.

We have experienced some of our replies being returned as undeliverable. Please note: we reply to messages within 48 hours. If you don't hear from us within that time frame it is possible your message was returned to us as undeliverable. We ask that you please send your message again.

Your business is very important to us! Thank you!


I think a lot of people, in a hurry, make typos in their email addresses. This used to happen quite a bit before I posted this message. I also included (in small red letters) on the contact form itself a note to double check the email address to be sure it was correct. That has also helped with undeliverable emails.

However, based on the information in this post, I may very well have to change my thank you to include some additional stuff.

[Vertster]

I have seen many examples where people do not want to give out their real email address for fear of being added to some spam list. A bogus email will result in a bounce as well.

If you enforce strict validation on your email field then you get boguses that result in bounces. If not, you may see some people write things like "don't give out," "private" or other things like this.

Personally I think its too bad that people are afraid to give their email. We've started expirimenting with a javascript pop message on the unfocus property of the email field- this seems to work well. If anyone wants the code its real simple, I could post it. Except maybe it would crash the board... hehe boards don't always like javascript in posts.

[copywriter]

Well, I never get those types of comments simply because the site visitor has to give an email before I can reply This is a contact form, too, so people want me to email them back.

[Randy]

Like so many other areas, this is one of those "it depends upon the site" thing in my mind.

My main concern with those is to make sure the tone of the Thank You page is upbeat and continues the general theme of the rest of the site. To me, these types of contact forms are something too many people view as a pain instead of the potential gold mine they are.

Look at it this way... Someone was intrigued enough in your product/service to take the time to write you. Maybe 1 in 1,000 visitors will go to that extent. In my mind, these folks have the best possible potential to become a buyer. So we make sure we don't waste that opportunity to make a favorable first impression.

We make it a point to *always* respond to these requests quickly. Typically within an hour if it's during normal business hours. You wouldn't believe how many comments I've gotten about how utterly shocked they were by our speedy response. They're not used to receiving that type of customer service from a web site.

Another thing we've done is to use these contact forms to reinforce the primary or secondary action we would like to see a potential customer take.

For instance, if we're selling software which comes with a free 30 trial, we might mention that they can download it (and provide a link) on the Thank You page and make a special mention that the program comes with a complete Help system built into it. Basically tell them to feel free to try it out while we're answering their question.

Or if the site offers some type of freebie with their purchase, remind them of that fact more prominently here.

Or if the site has samples available to view, why not point that out (with a link of course) once again? If they've been skimming they may not have seen that portion of your site yet.

There's absolutely no reason why a Thank You page has to be a "stop" page where they ask a question and leave. Use that page to feature little things which may get lost in longer copy. Reinforce your offer. And by all means respond as quickly as possible. If you do you can build credibility and trust in one fell swoop.

Randy