Wouldnt it be great if the ticket system uses for us was available in turn for our customers but branded with our logos/schemes?

That would be FABULOUS.

-G

Nah. Just another headache to deal with. Besides customers shouldn't need a "ticketing system" to contact you (depends on what you sell though).

Try a "form" on your contact page that they can just fill out.

I really regret putting the form on our contact us page.

We get soooooo many emails every day now. And I just can't answer most of them. Actually, most of the questions just don't even make any sense to me. I don't know who they think they're emailing.

One man's email asked something about his mail getting put through the laundry, so he couldn't read it and didn't know who it was from, so what should he do?

We haven't sent anyone any mail lately, so I don't know why he emailed us. Plus, he didn't give his name, just his email address.

Anyway, we get crazy emails like that all the time. I have no idea how to respond.

I'm thinking about taking the form off the site. It just makes it way too easy for people to contact us for any tiny little thing.

It takes me a couple hours each day to respond, and I get to only half of them. And very few have resulted in sales.

ROFLMAO


I get recipe inquiries constantly, which is cool...it's my gift to humanity.
What cracks me up though is when I get something like (and I get this alot):
"Hi, I had a great marti*i in Dallas at the So-and-So lounge; how did they make it, what was in it?"

My answer is usually, "They made it very well and it was made with marti*i liquid."

That is so funny. People are so strange.

My husband used to work nights driving a limo for extra money. He said every night he would get at least one customer who would get into the limo, see the TV and ask if it was cable TV.

The most common questions (or comments) we get are:

Most common "odd" message:
My air conditioner broke. It's supposed to be under warranty, but the repairman wants to charge me $600 to fix it. I think you should pay for it because it's less than one year old. (Note that we're a book store.)

I need to buy some books.
(That's it. The complete message. Ummm . . What books do you need? They usually don't even respond to my response even though I try to phrase it so helpfully.)

How much is shipping?
(We respond that it's based on what you buy and where it's being shipped, and that the website will calculate the shipping charges for you. They respond that they won't know how many books or which books to buy until we tell them how much the shipping is. Okay, which books are you interested in and where will they be shipped, we ask. They respond, "I already told you, I don't want to buy any books until you tell me how much shipping will cost." It goes on and on until I just stop responding.)

There are so many more, I can't even begin to remember them all. Most of them are just time-wasters.

A man in Canada has been emailing me all day today about one tiny little inexpensive book that we sell at a big discount. He wanted to know how much it would be in Canadian dollars. (I told him.) Then he wanted to know how much shipping would be. (I asked for his address, he responded, I gave him shipping charges.) Then he asked me to figure out how much customs fees would be. (I told him he should call his local customs office.) He wanted me to do it. (I politely told him I couldn't do that.) Then he wanted the Table of Contents for the book. (I emailed it.) Then he wanted a synopsis of the book. He didn't think the description on the site was detailed enough. Could I just provide him with a summary of each chapter?

What would you do with these people?

I can't spend the entire day on one customer who might order a $20 book.

Thats why i cannot answer the phones any more. Sales asked me to discuss a shipment with a disgruntled customer one time to calm them down and try and solve the problem (since i spend alot of my time in the shipping area). In about 5 minutes i had the customer tell me they would never ever order from us again in a million years." They hung up and sales asked me how it went...LOL. I cant do it, i get too fed up and dont stay patient.

My sister took a call (on our toll free line) from a customer in WA. They discussed what to plant around this guys mailbox for about 40 minutes, he finally ordered 1 $5 plant...i just had to laugh.

Our sales manager is soooo good at cutting to the chase without appearing unfriendly. It is an art that has to be learned.

I think a ticket system is great for a software company, etc... Even with , it drives me crazy sometimes and id rather wait on the phone for a tech.

By the way Martini - I had a GREAT martini at the Global Grill in Pensacola...

We have a woman like that in our office, too. She's been there for 15 years and she is so good on the phones. She just moves them along so smoothly.

I always end up with the customers who want to complain about something that's not our fault - such as why the book they desperately need to teach a class hasn't been published yet. Of course it's my fault.

Here's an email we got this morning from our website:

> > Comments: pls i do say that you arethe best of
> all,i had your product
> that was sent to me from my brother in us but it was
> locked not to accept my
> sim pls can u help me unlock it..thanks

So I asked him what product he purchased, thinking maybe it was a CD-ROM and his brother forgot to forward the sheet with the code to unlock the CD. (I don't have a clue what a sim is.)

Here's his response:

i cant understand what you mean by
thats i said to your product that i am using now a
phone that can not work with my sim i just
want you to help me unlock it from the service problem
thats all mr.the phone model is carmera phone
you dont want me to make use of it here you tell me i
go out there to purchase fo another product so that i
dont close my business just bcos of this cell .thanks

Again, we are a bookstore, not a cell phone store. Why do I keep getting these emails? They have nothing to do with us.

There are so many each day that have nothing to do with our website or our products and services.

I keep thinking I should just remove the contact us form so they will have to do a little extra work to contact us. Maybe in the meantime they'll realize we're not the company they need to contact.

Does anyone have any ideas?

A contact form adds one more layer of 'stickiness' to your site, but as it has been noted here, often wastes more of your time than its worth.

A couple of ideas to make the forms worth your time:

* Have specific fields on your form - name, contact info, product in question, type of contact (ie: question, comment, request, shipping, problem)

* Require ALL form fields to be filled - if you have the right fields on your form, this should cut down on the cryptic emails

* Help Page/ FAQ page - Provide a page of answers to common questions, how to use the cart, how shipping works and anything else that you get asked alot.

* Autoresponders - an email response that is automatically sent to visitors who fill out a form. You could include basic FAQ information in the responder, or a link to the help page/FAQ page.

Additionally you could have a seperate responder for each TYPE of contact. (ie: if the visitor chooses 'feedback' or 'comment' then the responder could be 'Thank you for your comment', or if the visitor chooses 'shipping questions' then the responder might include shipping specific information.

Anyways...for those of you who are recieving tons of contacts from your forms, these changes can help organize, and expediate your responses - automating much of the task.

Maybe I could put the contact us form at the bottom of the FAQs page - and expand the FAQs to cover more questions and perhaps describe the company (ie, we're a bookstore).

When I put the form on there, I really thought it would help real customers. I didn't realize I'd get so many odd questions that have nothing to do with our company.

We do have specific fields, but they aren't required.

Does anyone else get odd questions?

Bookmark (Patti isn't it?),

I agree with AZAkers suggestions for improving the contact form.

However, regarding the crazy emails, as you say, you're a bookstore. So take the lemons (crazy emails) and make lemonade (funny book of service emails written for the business owner audience).

Certainly a lot of laughs to be had...and if marketed right, could be some money to be made. Best of all, since it's primarily a compilation it wouldn't take a lot of writing...it writes itself. Heck, strike a deal with Steph and you could collect such emails from all stores via a forum thread and have help you market the book to us all.

There you go, a plan for your early retirement. (And you thought it was a hassle to deal with those emails.)
Ed

Hi Bookmark,

I doubt this is what is happening, but we had an odd experience years back in our early days on the net. We got a lot of email that just semed very misdirected like yours. It happened for about 6 months till i stumbled upon a landscaping service website that had copied some of our page content in an effort to create a site. They had never finished the job and left links active that went to our site...for example, the CONTACT US link opened an email to our sales dept. He had links on his nav that were half done, some to his pages, some still to ours. I guess he got some cheap web service then abandoned the project. I contacted the company repeatedly, but it took 3 or 4 tries to get them to remove the content. Crazy! I just wondered if someone may have tried to copy your form and didnt know what they were doing...just a thought.

Ed -

That's an excellent idea. It may not make a book, but at least we can enjoy them and share them with friends. I've been so busy being irritated by them that I really wasn't thinking about how amusing some of them are.

SRG -

That is an excellent point. It is possible that some other sites have copied the form. I picked up the code for it here on the forums, and it really is a good one. It would explain a lot.