Webforms for help requests - best practices

Jeremy Van Kley

We have a webform created that our customers can fill out to submit help requests. What is the best way to disseminate this webform and make it available for them to fill out? I don't want to have to email it to them, but at the moment I don't have a space on a webpage to embed the link/form. Would that be the best way to go, or are there other options to drive traffic to the webform?

Thanks!
Jeremy

J. Craig Williams

Jeremy,

Put yourself in your customer/clients shoes (if they wear shoes).

Where are they when they find themselves in need of help?

Are they using a software product or app? The Help menu might be a good place.

Are they away from their computer? Tablet or smart phone an option?

From my experience, if it is hard or something that needs to be done "back at the office", you'll lose 80% of the feedback because it will never get written.

Craig

Tim Meeks

Jeremy,

I concur with Craig. I would also ask "How are they contacting you today?" I assume by phone and email?

If so, what you may have to start doing is communicating with them when they contact you and letting them know about the form.

But even if you tell them, you have to get the webform URL to the method by which they access your site, etc. If you are not able to put this on a webpage, email or text may be your best workaround as the webform URL is not an easy to remember address.

Hope this helps.

Tim

JamesR

Jeremy,

There are only two ways to get your customer to the Form:

Email Link

Embeded Link/Form on a Web page

I would go for Web Page in a customer Portal or on yur Main Company website as standard and the perhaps a marketting campain to get people to the relevent page and info.

If using e-mail then again if it is part of a marketing campaign that may work or you could always have the link as part of your signiture block in your mail.

I hope this helps.

JamesR

Jeremy Van Kley

Craig, Tim, & James --

Thanks for the helpful feedback. This helps confirm for me that this webform won't be as effective as I want it to be without an easy way for customers to get to it, specifically a web presence (it's really a no-brainer -- I just need to put in more time and involve more people now). I do like the signature block idea, and we may try that route in the meantime. Thanks again.

Jeremy

J. Craig Williams

I really like the email signature block idea. A lot.

Thanks James!

Craig

Richard Rymill SBP

Another idea that might work... one of our Health and Safety clients has printed notices that include a QR Code that when used by a mobile, takes users straight to the Smartsheet Form to complete an accident report on their smartphone. Easy solution in the right location. That might help as part of a range of routes to your form along with suggesting your users save the link to their Desktop, be that phone, tablet or Pc. for when they need it.

Regards

RichardR

J. Craig Williams

That is a neat tip, Richard.

Craig

Tim Meeks

I concur Craig.. That is a neat tip Richard shared. At my state agency, we are still floaing around paperforms. QR Codes seem light years away....

J. Craig Williams

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But I know the feeling. I recently applied to a huge multi-national engineering firm and had to fill out a four page paper application form. The cost savings for moving even that to Smartsheet is not insignificant.

There are currently 800+ job opening world wide. Over half (450+) of those in the US.

Let's assume that the US HQ / HR does not do the hiring overseas and use 400 for back of the Smartsheet forum for the calcs.

Let's assume an average of 10 apps per job make it past the initial screening. Some more, some less, 10 is OK.

4000 paper applications.

3 months to fill the job.

For such a large corp this may be just maintenance and not growth.

16000 per year.

About half an hour to fill out the form, probably half that to have someone type it into a computer. I assume they do that.

4000 hours. Two persons, full time.

To do something that the applicant should have done originally.

That does not take into account errors in translating horrible handwriting (like mine).

And this could be fixed with a few Smartsheets and a nice front end (or series of Webforms).

At 30k salary, even if I am off by an order of magnitude, we're still looking at 6k cost per year.

Maybe I should call their HR guy...

Craig

Jeremy Van Kley

Great feedback, all. Thanks! Yes, QR codes seem light years away, but I hear they're fairly easy to generate. I'm no expert, but this may be an option.