Inquiry Processing

Fast & Easy Way To Download New Requests

[rogerd]

A site we are working with is a victim of its own success - at one time, product info requests were few and far between. We set up a simple e-mail form that let visitors request info.

The volume of inquiries has grown to a few dozen a day. Not huge, but it's getting to be a job to view the e-mails and type the info into some kind of local program for mailing and followup.

The client is looking for a way to download new inquiries into a spreadsheet. Any suggestions on a fast way to do this? I'm not looking for a complex MySQL-type deal, just something that would take very little time to set up, and also take little effort to use on the client's part. The client is not technical, so I'm looking for something fairly idiotproof.

Writing the inquiries to a text file would be fairly simple (and could easily be imported into Excel), but I can anticipate some download complexity. Also, creating an import macro might take a bit of time that the client probably doesn't want to pay for.

[Filipe]

Well, I think the MySQL solution would be the best, and none too complex. You store the input information, let the client go online to check the info, once they've emailed the person back, they mark a request as "read" and get a list of just unread requests.

Even better, you can have the emailing be done FROM the site, unifying the product, and allowing the client do this from any computer with an internet connection.

[txbakers]

My suggestion:

Create an Access database and use your form to submit the data to the Access database using ASP. Very easy to do.

I have an example to show you if you sticky mail ne.

[sun818]

Do these replies have to be custom built? Can there be a FAQ appended to each product that answers the most common product inquiry questions?

[rogerd]

Thanks for the replies. I'm trying to get a bit more information on how the client currently processes the inquiries to help establish a direction.