Ugh. I hate forms. And a bad form is like a bad first date. It’s the ultimate in crappy customer service.
Nothing like a badly composed form to make you feel a company doesn’t respect your time and wants to trip you up so they have a legitimate reason to screw you later.
Now I’ve had good forms. A new doctor I went to see last year sent me a form that I could fill out on my computer and return via email. Easy for her because she didn’t have to interpret my hand-writing, easy for me because I didn’t have to do any hand-writing. (Ore remember to bring the form.)
My latest run-in with a form, however – not so good. You tell me, what’s wrong with this form?
Yep – you make me fill it out by hand and don’t leave room to actually include the information asked for? Adding layers of onerous doesn’t encourage truthfulness.
And it’s not like they needed to save the space. It was a PDF. They were forcing me to print it off. Make it 10 pages if you need to. And even better, use the form capabilities of a PDF to let me fill it out electronically. Oh, even better, use a secure online form! This gets us to a solution that’s not only better for me – less time, no paper, no handwriting – but better for you too!
And I’ve already figured out that that’s all you care about anyway. Should have started there.