Many businesses find contacting customers in advance more beneficial, and it is a fact that it speeds up the process. Communicating in advance makes things certain, like the purpose of arrival, expectations, and dates. For this reason, some business lines such as coaches, law firms, and psychiatrists want to know their customers beforehand. There were paper forms to learn about the customer in the past, but today there are tools to make this work even easier.
The thing that will make your work even easier is online forms. While the counseling intake process used to take longer, this process turned into an informative tool that ended in a shorter time with online forms. Thanks to online forms, it becomes a more effortless experience for both customers and business owners. In this article, you will learn what counseling forms are, their benefits and how you can create them.
What is a counseling intake form?
A counseling intake form is a document used to gather information about potential clients, their reasons for coming, complaints, and expectations before starting sessions. In light of this information, the expert decides in advance what kind of consultancy he will provide to the customer and which methods to use.
For example, imagine you are a psychiatrist, and a client wants to have a psychiatric session with you. The first thing you think about is finding out why the patient wants to come. You may then like to learn the mental health history of the client. In this way, you can learn what methods the client has used before and how it has benefited. The information obtained from online counseling intake forms lets the psychiatrist know how to proceed in the session before the client comes.
What is a counseling intake form?
11 benefits of using an intake form before counseling sessions
Intake forms not only give you advanced information but also have benefits in many different ways. It accelerates all the procedures both for the customer and for the operation of your business. Additionally, it can help you attract prospective clients. Here are 11 benefits of intake forms:
1 - Save time: With the intake forms, you learn the information you need to know before and understand what kind of treatment or guidance is required.
2 - Better client experience: Since you have already learned the information about the customer, you know what they want to achieve and act according to their wishes.
3 - Quality of clients: You can more or less guess what kind of personality the customers have since you have already contacted them through forms. as a result, it is up to you whether to serve customers or not.
4 - Save and check: By keeping the intake forms after accepting the customer, you can easily go and check forms whenever you need them.
5 - Customer satisfaction: As the customers write the information about themselves on the intake forms before, the service they receive will be of better quality. Businesses that are prepared for all the needs of their clients can satisfy them more easily.
6 - Increase accuracy: Sometimes, customers can't say precisely the right complaints about themselves. Talking on the phone can lead to more misunderstandings. You do not allow mistakes with the questions you ask in the intake forms.
7 - Workload reduction: Thanks to the forms that you can easily prepare, customers fill out an essential part about themselves in the forms. Thus, you can easily learn what you need to do thanks to the forms and take action accordingly.
8 - Appointment setting: While creating intake forms, you can set up an appointment with your customer more quickly, thanks to the date field and Google Calendar integration.
9 - Accessibility: You can easily access online intake forms from your phone, computer, or tablet. You can fill out or prepare the form wherever and whenever you want.
10 - Eye-catching design: You can create eye-pleasing and professional forms by using different features in form creators. You can impress your customers even before you provide any service.
11 - Customized service: You can also ask people specific questions using different form builder features. In addition, with the information you have obtained, you can provide different services specific to the customer and make them more satisfied.
How to build an online intake form on forms.app
One of the successful form builders, forms.app helps to accelerate the client intake process by offering a variety of features and free templates. With the help of forms.app, you can automate your business with online forms, and you don't have a reason to tire. Also, you can create client intake forms quickly thanks to an easy-to-use interface. Here are a few ways you should follow while creating a form:
- Choose the template: You can choose one of the client intake form templates according to your purpose.
- Change the colors of the form: To have a charming looking, you can change the colors from the themes section.
- Customize your form: You can add or subtract questions as you wish. Also, you may add a special message for your customers.
- Add conditional logic: In order not to overwhelm people, you can add conditional questions to your form from the setting section.
- Integrate with Google Calendar: By integrating with Google Calendar, you can easily arrange appointments with customers and automate your online form.
- Add Thank you page: After people fill out the form, you can add a customized and sincere thank you page if you wish.
- Share: You can share your form on social media to inform people.
- Embed the link: You can embed the link to your website, so no matter of time, everyone can see the link whenever they need it.
With forms.app, you can prepare forms on different topics, from mental health intake forms to life coaching intake forms. It offers a number of form templates and helps to catch potential clients. To prepare more exciting and professional forms, you can start right away by using the following templates provided by forms.app.
Creating a counseling intake form on forms.app
Wrapping it up
In brief, Intake forms have many distinct advantages and conveniences that will benefit not only the business owner but also the customers. Most importantly, with the client intake information, you can foresee what kind of person will come and prepare accordingly. It also allows you to capture potential customers and save time. Now create intake forms using ready-made templates from forms.app and provide a better experience for your customers.
Ebru is an Outreach Operations Specialist and content writer at forms.app. Writing is her passion, particularly on topics such as eCommerce, social media, customer engagement, surveys, and online forms. During her free time, Ebru enjoys watching movies and exploring new destinations.
