Do you hate website contact forms as much as me?! Chances are the reason you’re completing a contact form is because you have a specific question. I’m betting you’re not the only one with that question. So rather than a website contact form, why don’t company websites replace the contact form with a more automated response system for the most frequently asked questions?
Replacement for website contact forms
For straightforward questions, a website may supplement website contact forms with a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s) page. But then you have to scroll down the page looking for your question. And let’s be honest, they never really have the answer to the question you’re looking for!
Companies like Facebook are starting to employ bots in Facebook Messenger so sales and customer service questions can be answered more quickly. This is based on AI (artificial intelligence). Once these babies get better, staying on hold waiting for a customer service rep will be a thing of the past. You’ll just type in your question and a computer will respond in a humanoid way that answers your question.
Doing away with website contact forms in healthcare
I recently reviewed how many website contact forms I received over the last two years and noticed that of the 74 inquiries (not many), over 90% of them were about price. When we get one of these inquiries, the office staff has to manually respond to each one. Painful. So if most everyone is asking about price, why not automate that process?!
And that’s what we did! I use the BuildMyBod Price Estimator on my website that allows consumers to check pricing automatically on all my services. My office staff doesn’t have to manually respond to answer these inquiries. In the past, and for most other doctors, patients call and ask about pricing but with a Price Estimator on the site, they get the info they want and we get their contact info for future email marketing.
By the way, the reason we had only 74 inquiries is because most patients realized we had the automated Price Estimator, so they used that instead. Through the Estimator, I received “wishlists” from over 2,700 unique users. Luckily I only had 74 people use the website contact form to ask about price.
I say luckily because think what would’ve happened if I didn’t have an automated Price Estimator and only the website contact form? Having only a form would translate into the office staff manually responding to over 2,700 inquiries! Instead, those 2,700 folks got instant pricing questions answered without all of the hassle and my office staff was able to be productive elsewhere.
Automation is where it’s at. May website contact forms rest in peace!
Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Jonathan Kaplan for BuildMyBod.
