Constructive RTFM

I present to you, an improvement on support ticket forms:

New Support Request Form

“You need massive cajones to put that up!” I hear you say, but hear me out.

Firstly there is the obvious advantage of users realising that there is, in actual fact, documentation available that will assist them with simple things like this. Notice the inline help even at this point – some users might not use the documentation because they don’t know how to reach it.

You now have a compounded situation. If the user actually decides to click the submit button with a reason and the validation passes (140 characters minimum is probably a good bet) you really do have a problem – they did RTFM and got no answers. In this situation you have already solved your problem; you now know what areas of your documentation you need to address. The next customer who comes across this page with the same problem won’t be submitting a ticket.

You could always even provide a group of radio buttons so that the user has quick answers – and at the same time you will have data that can be graphed.

It is important to remember – you are not being rude at all. Referring to the documentation will mean that the turnaround time for an answer will be orders of magnitudes faster than relying on a limited amount of human resources.