Just a quick post to get this off my mind, its a simple little idea but I would argue that it makes a heap of difference to how users feel when they contact you and the quality of the information they provide when they do.

Okay so what is more polite and encouraging of engagement to you?

1: “Hi how can I help you? Now if you let us know how we can get back in touch with you and we will see what we can do.”

or the more adopted standard of

2: “Who are you? How can we contact you? What did you want to say?”

Now if your anything like as human as I aspire to be the former is going to engage you more then the latter, the first understands that you have navigated to the page in order to engage and offers you that chance to engage first before asking you to qualify your message with the mundane contact details. The second asks you for the mundane before engaging with the reason for your navigating there. There may well be some benefits in placing a distraction between the driver of the requirement to converse and the facilitation of the conversation, but I wager they are more of an exception then a rule.

Just to clarify I propose that the layout of a generic contact / feedback form should be:

ASK THEM WHAT THEY WANT TO SAY

then

ASK THEM FOR THERE DETAILS

Quite simple isn’t it and a damned site friendlier and appears more interested in what the user has to say then garnering contact details for your databases.

Go on give it a try, and let us know how it went or simply just add your thoughts in the comments.