Intake forms
Ask the same questions every time, and stop ringing back.
Getting the questions
Say what you need to know
Name the form after the job it does, then describe in a sentence or two what you need to find out before you can quote. It comes back with the questions worded the way you would say them, in a sensible order, with the ones you genuinely cannot proceed without already marked. Correcting that is a far smaller job than starting with an empty list.
What it will not ask for
Nothing sensitive unless you put it there yourself. No date of birth, no social security number, no bank or card details, nothing medical. Every extra question costs you enquiries and leaves you holding personal information about strangers that you never wanted and now have to look after. It also will not invent your rules: no question that implies a price, a callout fee or a lead time you never mentioned.
Then change whatever you like
Nine kinds of question: short answer, long answer, email, phone, a number, a date, choose one, choose any number, and yes or no. Reword them, add a line of help under any of them, move them up and down, mark them required, delete the ones you do not need. A choice question needs at least one choice, one per line.
Putting it in front of people
Open it, and it gets an address
A new form is closed while you build it. Open it and it lives at an address you pick, which is what people type or scan. Keep it short and obvious, because it goes on printed things. A form and a website cannot share an address, so you will be told if one is taken.
The printed code comes with it
Every open form has a QR code pointing at it, on a print sheet measured in inches or as an SVG for whoever does your signage. Put it on a van, an invoice, a card or a shop window. Change the address later and the code is repointed for you, though anything already printed carries the old one.
Or put it on your website
With the Website tool, the form drops onto any page as a section, so somebody reading about what you do can ask you for a price without going anywhere else. It is the same form and the same list of answers either way.
What comes back
You are told straight away
An email the moment somebody sends one, with the answers in it. It goes to whichever address you name on the form, or to everybody on the account if you name none. An enquiry nobody hears about is an enquiry lost.
The answers, and getting rid of them
They sit in a list, newest first, unread ones marked. Take the lot away as a spreadsheet whenever you want, and delete any of them for good when you are done. They are somebody else's personal details, so keeping them longer than you need is a liability rather than a record.
What it does about rubbish
Do I have to worry about spam?
There is a hidden box on every form that a person never sees and never fills in. Anything that fills it in is thanked and thrown away without ever reaching your list. On top of that, no one machine can send you more than twelve in an hour.
What stops somebody sending nonsense?
An answer to a question that is not on your form is thrown away rather than stored. A choice nobody was offered does not count as a choice. An email address that is not one, or a word where a number belongs, is handed straight back to be fixed rather than filed.
Do you keep where an enquiry came from?
Only a one way hash of it, which is what the twelve an hour count works from. Not the address itself, and it is never read back or shown to anybody, including you.
Can I test it before I open it?
Yes. While it is closed you can open its address yourself and fill it in, and nothing is stored, so your own dummy answers never end up at the top of the list.