A customer called to ask why nobody had answered their email.
That’s how we found out our quote requests weren’t going anywhere.
The Form Worked. The Email Didn’t.
At ATL Rubber, quote requests from the website were supposed to come to me. The form looked like it worked. A buyer filled it out, hit submit, and moved on.
The request just never reached anyone. The site’s outgoing email (SMTP) wasn’t set up right, so nothing left the website.
The buyer thought they’d asked. We didn’t know they had.
How long was it broken for? I honestly couldn’t tell you looking back at it. I had implemented something and didn’t finish it all the way through. It’s part of it when you’re the marketing department of one.
Why Nobody Noticed
Nothing looked wrong from the inside. No error, no bounced email, no complaint. Just fewer quote requests than there should have been.
And fewer requests doesn’t look like a broken form. It looks like a slow week.
That’s what makes this kind of leak dangerous. The only person who knows something went wrong is the buyer, and most of them won’t call to tell you. They’ll move on and call your competitor instead.
The Fix Took A Few Hours
Once we knew, fixing the email took a few hours to set up and test. To test it, I asked some friends on social media to go to a page on the site and send a quote request through the form. The requests came through as expected and the messages cracked me up.
The bigger change was how quote requests were handled after that.
One owner. Every request came to me. No shared inbox where everyone assumes someone else has it.
Management saw everything. Requests went to management automatically too, so nobody had to wonder whether quotes were getting answered.
A reply within a day or two. Most got a response the same day or the next, at least an acknowledgement.
Check Yours This Week
You don’t need my exact setup. You need to know your quote requests are landing the way they are designed to.
- Send yourself a test. Fill out your own quote form like a customer would. Then do it again every month or two. Things break quietly after updates.
- Send to more than one inbox. If one address stops working, someone else still sees the request.
- Watch the numbers. A sudden drop in form submissions is worth a look before you blame a slow month.
- Name one owner. Whoever owns it should know that’s their job, and how fast they’re expected to answer.
A Quote Request Is A Buyer Ready To Buy
Someone who fills out a quote form already knows what they need. They’re not browsing. They are literally asking you to sell to them.
When that request goes nowhere, the website, sales, and customer service all look like they dropped the ball, even though none of them ever saw it. More on keeping those teams on the same page in Sales, Customer Service, and the Website: Working From the Same Playbook.
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