Let's pretend we're a university optometry department and the tech support/contact us link on our website can be accessed by optometrists, their staff members, and patients alike.
A patient is trying to message their optometrist but instead sends the support form to our optometry department's tech support by accident. Multiply this by hundreds and you have a harried tech support staff. Our goal is to lessen the load of misdirected messages tech support needs to answer.
We want the patient to have a bit of clarity regarding their role up front and give them access to three options after identifying themselves. The proposed workflow for a currently logged out patient is this:
- Click
Contact us
link - Select your role (O.D. / staff or Patient)
- Select who you want to contact (if patient choose between O.D. / Office Staff / Tech Support) this step will give context for guiding the selection
Log in
if necessary - logging in will take the user to their selected destination
Another suggestion goes as following:
- Click
Contact us
link Log in
- Select who you want to contact (if patient choose between O.D. / Office Staff / Tech Support) this step will give context for guiding the selection
- Take the user to their selected destination
I'm concerned about asking the patient to log in right away without context into who they're trying to contact and find that approach to be a barrier. In researching similar organizations only one requires log in up front.
Any thoughts or suggestions?