[NCLUG] html form to email cgi advice

Chad Perrin perrin at apotheon.com
Sun Feb 19 23:44:34 MST 2012


On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 09:29:33PM -0700, Anthony Foiani wrote:
> Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> writes:
> >
> > Wait . . . seriously?
> 
> Yes, seriously.
> 
> Almost all of your reasons have to do with the ease of the server /
> provider side; my complaints with your reasons are mostly on the
> consumer side.

Sometimes, making things easier on the provider side means helping the
provider actually provide better service.  Do you expect better service
from the company that can quickly sort incoming messages and ensure they
get to the right people, or from a company that has some minimum-wage
part time high school student hired on the advice of a middle manager's
brother (who has high hopes for his son, who's "real good with
computers") that can't legally even work enough hours to handle the
volume of email the company gets?


> >
> > 1. Some people find it inconvenient to have to move from the webpage
> >    to an email client to send feedback.
> 
> Many people use gmail or other web-based email anyway, so this is
> often not an issue.

That's like saying "Many people use cars instead of bicycles, so the fact
some cities make it very dangerous to ride bicycles in town is often not
an issue."


>
> From personal experience, I'd rather use one interface (either gmail
> or thunderbird or emacs+vm or...) than try to figure out each site's
> magic.

I don't know of much magic involved in filling in these fields:

    Name:
    Subject:
    Email Address:
    Message:

. . . and pressing the "Submit" button sure doesn't seem very difficult
to figure out, either.


> >
> > 2. Sometimes, using a web form to automate an initial filter against
> >    unwanted email (by not exposing the email address to the world)
> >    is desirable.
> 
> Then you need better documentation and better customer service.
> 
> If you start doing things like "go through a big form, then answer a
> captcha to send us mail", you're saying "our time is more important
> than yours."

By contrast, you could just say "Screw it.  Don't contact us, because the
last time we posted an email address on the site it brought our mail
server to its knees.  Good luck!"


> >
> > 3. Where contact is utterly useless without specific information
> >    being provided, a web form provides a way to require that
> >    specific fields be filled out.
> 
> And then those pulldowns don't get updated when a new product comes
> out, etc.  On the same page as the raw email address, give a list of
> items that would make your life easier -- and point out that it would
> make resolving *the customer's* issue easier and faster as well.
> 
> Not to mention the fact that these pulldowns inevitably reflect the
> point of view of the person writing the form (or writing the spec for
> the form), etc.  You are then forcing the customer to do extra work to
> make their questions fit your schema.  Again, you're telling the user
> that their time is cheaper than yours.

That's a problem with the management of the site, and not with the
usefulness of email forms.  Anyway, I never said anything about product
selection pulldowns.  That's your contribution, and not mine.


> >
> > 4. If the form of the email can be controlled, received contact
> >    messages can be more easily parsed and handled by automated
> >    systems where such is desirable.
> 
> Again, you simply need better customer service.  Hire a temp at
> 10$/hour to do initial parsing, classification, filtering (ref 2
> above), possibly first line of replying asking for more info (as in
> 3), etc.

Automation of certain types of contact handling can *help* provide better
customer service.  If you get an *immediate* receipt email assuring you
that your email was properly forwarded to someone who can respond to it,
you won't wonder if the email went to the right place if you don't get a
response within the first couple hours.  Such autoresponses can also be
used to give more useful information for how to help customer support
help you, for that matter.

$10/hr to do initial parsing, classification, filtering, et cetera --
tasks that can be just as easily (and probably in a less error-prone
manner) accomplished by an automated system -- is a ludicrous expense
more worthy of luddites than of people who want to actually help their
customers.


> >
> > 5. When the message is going to an email address that is used for
> >    more than one single purpose, a web form allows control of things
> >    like subject lines to ensure that those messages stand out within
> >    the recipient's inbox.
> 
> Uh... so you're inconveniencing your users and customers so that you
> don't have to be bothered to set up another email alias?
> 
> I think it's a bit wonky to send email to customer service (through
> form or direct), and then get mail back from "bob at ...".  What happens
> if I want to reply and Bob is on vacation?

No, of course not -- because I don't use email forms to inconvenience
users.  I use them to ensure that things are handled more efficiently.
If you're using them to inconvenience people, you're doing it wrong,
which may be due to a severe lack of imagination on your part.

Who says it's "bob@" anyway?  What if it goes to an issue tracker so that
there are a dozen people ready to pick it up next in their daily work?
What if it goes to the CEO of a small company as well as to one of the
two support people, because the CEO likes to ensure things are being
handled properly within a fifteen-employee company?  What if you have
absolutely no idea how different companies do things, and are just
complaining about stuff you don't understand?

Your contentious "I hate technology, and you're stupid for liking it"
attitude is kind of getting on my nerves.


> 
> Using role-based email addresses is the obvious answer, and it's
> better in the long run for both the provider and the consumer.

Using role-based email addresses does not mean that you don't get things
from multiple sources in a single inbox.


> >
> > There are other reasons too, but five seems like a nice round number.
> 
> Fair enough.  I just disagree with all of them.  :-)

Clearly.  I think all of your reasons for disagreement are facile,
quietly condescending, and weirdly anti-technology.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]



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