What questions should you ask on an enquiry form?

Enquiry forms grow the way most business artefacts grow: somebody wishes they had known something, a field is added, and nothing is ever removed. The result is a form that asks a stranger for a set of details assembled from years of individual frustrations, most of which do not change what happens next and none of which the stranger has any reason to provide.

The test for each field is narrow and worth applying literally. Does the answer change what you do in the next hour? If it changes who responds, how urgently, or whether you can help at all, it earns its place. If it is something you would establish in the first thirty seconds of a conversation anyway, it belongs in that conversation, where the person is already engaged and answering costs them nothing.

On most forms that leaves four things. A way to reach them, and their preferred route. A short description of what they need, in their own words rather than as a category. Where they are, if you have a service area. And when they need it, which is usually the single most useful field because it separates the urgent from the exploratory and lets a small team allocate attention honestly.

The free-text description does more work than the structured alternatives and is frequently replaced by a dropdown, which is a downgrade. A category tells you which bucket the enquiry falls in; a sentence in the customer's own words tells you what they actually think their problem is, how urgent it feels, and often the detail that determines whether the job is straightforward. Categories exist for the business's convenience and cost the information that made the enquiry useful.

Budget is the field most often added and the one most likely to do harm. Asked on a form, before any trust exists, it reads as a filter designed to sort people rather than help them, and the honest answers you receive are worth less than the enquiries you lose asking. It is a reasonable question once a conversation is running and there is a reason for it — a genuine scope choice, a range to place them in — but as a field on a first form it costs more than it returns.

One thing worth adding rather than removing is a statement of what happens next. A single line saying when they will hear back and from whom converts the form from a void into a commitment. It also sets the expectation you then have to meet, which is uncomfortable and is precisely why it works: a business that publishes a response promise on its form usually starts keeping one.