Using the Right Contact Form

Wow, these entry titles can get really boring if I try. Okay – this is a pretty basic one, which makes it good for early on a Thursday morning.

On our OD Help menu there are three selections that allow you to contact the home office here in Tonopah. They are: “Report a Problem”, “Report Rules Violation”, and “Information/Suggestion”. I receive, on average, about 350 e-mails each and every day through these three contact points – and I like to try to respond to as many as possible. I set up the system the way that I did so that technical problems and Rules violations would be easy to separate from less-urgent information requests and suggestions. In addition, reports from Open Diary Plus subscribers are sorted to a separate box, so they can be attended to first. This makes my life easier.

However, the system doesn’t work if people send Rules violations to the Information box, or send suggestions to the box for technical problems. It becomes worse when people spam all of the contact boxes with a repeat of the same problem. This makes the task of sorting out which mails are what much more difficult. So please, when you want to contact us, choose which contact form you use carefully. It will help to get your issue resolved sooner.

Also, I recently put a link on the front page for contacting OD for business reasons – press inquiries, advertising, etc. This is clearly marked as only for business, but some members have been using it for sending problem reports to us. I’m sorry to say it, but any mail coming to that box that is not a business query is going to be deleted without a response.

This entry sounds way too business-like for my tastes – I guess I should finish it like so:

Thanking you in advance for your attention to this matter,

The DiaryMaster

Just kidding about the Tonopah thing, by the way.

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I think you’re giving people too many choices. Perhaps a generic “notify” form with a list box, directing the user to check only ONE box to determine which “bin” to place their query in. They can check only ONE box, and they must check a box before the form can be sent.

I just wanted you to know that I renewed my subscription using the new method and it went so smoothly. Great work you are doing!

woah… someone felt like ranting. smile!! isabel