Asking the right questions to get the right information
In order for you to deliver memorable photos and outstanding service to your clients, you need to have the right information. Sending questionnaires to your clients is a great way to capture the important details. Light Blue’s forms can be sent from a shoot record and will update your records with the details that you need. Your clients are essentially doing your admin for you, while you appear to be really thorough & organised. There’s no limit to the number of different forms that you can use, so you’re free to ask the right questions at the right times!
In this guide we’ll cover:
- How to design questionnaires using Form templates
- The different fields available in forms
- How send a questionnaire to clients from a Shoot record
- Including existing information about the shoot & clients within the form
- Handling form submissions
- Example questionnaires that you can use for yourself
Designing questionnaires using Form templates
In order to send questionnaires to your clients, you need to start by creating a form template.
To do that, open the form template preferences window, and click on the add record button. You can then give it a sensible name to refer to later. You are now ready to start adding fields to your form.
Different fields available in forms
You can gather all sorts of different information from your clients using forms.
Firstly, it’s possible to gather information about the shoot:
As well as information about the contacts who will be involved:
The Main Contact field will ask for details about the primary contact who is associated with the shoot.
The Wedding Couple field will gather the details of the two partners who make up a wedding couple for a wedding shoot.
The Roles field will allow you to gather details of additional contacts and assign roles to them within the shoot. This is useful for getting details about other family members, additional participants, or suppliers that you are working with.
The Other Contacts field works in a similar way to the roles field, but does not require you to set any roles.
When you add one of these contacts fields to a form, you will be given the option to choose which pieces of information you wish to gather, for example name, email address, phone number etc.
Finally, there are additional fields that you can include within your form to gather more information that is not directly associated with a shoot or contact. There are also formatting options including headings and text you can add for your client to read when they are filling in your form.
How send a questionnaire to clients from a Shoot record
To send a form to your clients, go to the relevant shoot record, click on the activity tab and then the green plus button. From there you can choose to add a form using one of your existing form templates.
You can choose the recipients of the form from the list of contacts who are linked to the shoot. When you click the publish button, Light Blue will send an email with a link to a webpage where your client can complete the form.
Including existing information about the shoot & clients within the form
It’s most likely that you will be using forms together additional information about existing shoots and contact.
To save your clients the effort of filling out the details again, Light Blue can include the existing information that you already know within the form when you publish it.
Just make sure that the following check box is checked:
Emails that are sent to your client.
There are a few different emails that can be sent to your client relating to forms & questionnaires. You can adjust the wording and tone of the various emails via the email tabs in the form template.
Firstly there is the Publication Email which is sent the moment you publish the form, and invite your client to follow a link to complete the questionnaire.
The Submitted Email is sent to your client when they have submitted a form that is linked to an existing shoot.
If you have chosen to use the form template as a contact form, for example having it installed on your website or placed somewhere for anyone to fill out, then the Contact Form Submitted Email will get sent to the main contact who filled out the form.
Handling form submissions
When your client has submitted the form, you will receive an email to let you know that it’s ready.
If the form is linked to an existing shoot record, then your client will also receive the Form Submitted email that you set up in your form template.
You will see the submitted form in Light Blue’s Inbox. When you double-click on the form for mission, Light Blue will import the submitted information and update any existing records.
You’ll notice the answers to any miscellaneous fields will appear in the activity tab of the shoot or contact record that the form is linked to.
Scheduling a form to be sent at a specific time in the future
You may find it helpful to prepare a form that you will send to your clients sometime in the future.
To do that, add the form to the shoot record in the usual way, by clicking on the green plus button in the activity tab of the shoot.
Instead of publishing the form right away, go to the emails tab, choose the published email, and uncheck the “send the following email when the publishing the form” check box.
Now, when you click publish, your client will not receive an email from you. At this moment they do not know who that you have published the form at all. Instead the link to the form will get copied onto your computer’s clipboard, and you can paste that into an email which you can schedule to be sent at a date and time of your choosing.
Example forms
You will find some sample form templates when you first sign up and download Light Blue. You can tweak them to suit you or you can create your own templates from scratch.
