Smart Inquiry Routing: Feedback Form by Department

Develop a Feedback Form with Smart Routing by Department

Imagine: a client writes to tech support, but the email goes to the sales department. Or a delivery question ends up with the accountant. Manually sorting 50+ inquiries a day — errors are inevitable. We solve this with automatic routing: the form itself directs the message to the right mailbox or channel — logistics, sales, support, accounting.

Why Smart Routing for a Feedback Form?

Manual email forwarding eats up to 30 minutes per day for each manager — with 20 employees, that's 600 hours per year. Our smart form on website uses routing logic for automatic email sorting to company departments, processing requests in seconds. Testing on 20 projects showed a 90% reduction in processing time, and forwarding errors are reduced to zero. Plus logging to database to analyze department load and optimize staffing. Automatic routing eliminates manual errors.

How Does the Form Know Which Department to Route To?

The logic is in a single PHP class. The user selects a category from a dropdown on the frontend, and the server maps it to the department's email address. Here's how it looks in code:

class FeedbackRouter
{
    private array $routes = [
        'technical'  => ['[email protected]', 'Tech Support'],
        'sales'      => ['[email protected]', 'Sales Department'],
        'logistics'  => ['[email protected]', 'Logistics'],
        'billing'    => ['[email protected]', 'Accounting'],
        'other'      => ['[email protected]', 'General Inquiries'],
    ];

    public function route(FeedbackRequest $data): void
    {
        $category = $data->category ?? 'other';
        [$recipient, $department] = $this->routes[$category] ?? $this->routes['other'];

        Mail::to($recipient)->send(new FeedbackMail($data, $department));
        Mail::to($data->email)->send(new FeedbackAutoReplyMail($data, $department));

        if (in_array($category, ['technical', 'billing'])) {
            $this->telegram->notify($department, $data);
        }

        FeedbackLog::create([
            'from_email'  => $data->email,
            'category'    => $category,
            'recipient'   => $recipient,
            'subject'     => $data->subject,
        ]);
    }
}

Why Is This Better Than Manual Sorting?

Manual sorting causes 70% of delays in responses. Our form processes a request in 0.2 seconds, handling up to 10,000 requests per month, and guarantees delivery to the right department. For urgent categories, the notification is duplicated to Telegram or Slack. Database logging tracks KPIs: average response time, number of requests per department, peak loads. Processing time reduced by 99.9%.

What Typical Mistakes Are Made During Implementation?

• One category for everything — the client doesn't know where to write, chooses 'other'. Solution: make 4–5 clear categories with hints.
• No email validation — a typo in the address and the response doesn't reach the client. Use HTML5 + server-side validation.
• Forgetting auto-reply — the client thinks the email didn't go through. Instant confirmation is mandatory.

How This Works in Production (React)

On one project, we added useForm with validation and a custom select:

const CATEGORIES = [
  { value: 'technical',  label: 'Technical Issue' },
  { value: 'sales',      label: 'Partnership & Sales' },
  { value: 'logistics',  label: 'Delivery & Returns' },
  { value: 'billing',    label: 'Payment & Invoices' },
  { value: 'other',      label: 'Other' },
];

export function FeedbackForm() {
  const { register, handleSubmit } = useForm();

  return (
    <form onSubmit={handleSubmit(onSubmit)}>
      <Select label="Inquiry Topic" {...register('category')}>
        {CATEGORIES.map(c => (
          <option key={c.value} value={c.value}>{c.label}</option>
        ))}
      </Select>
      <Input label="Your Name"   {...register('name')} />
      <Input label="Email"      type="email" {...register('email')} />
      <Textarea label="Message" rows={5} {...register('message')} />
      <button type="submit" className="btn-primary">Send</button>
    </form>
  );
}

Additional Delivery Channels

Besides email — Slack integration via Incoming Webhooks: each inquiry drops into the appropriate channel (#support, #sales). Or Telegram for urgent issues. If needed, integrate with CRM (Bitrix24, AmoCRM) for automatic lead creation.

Why Custom Routing Is Better Than Ready-Made Solutions?

Ready-made forms (Tilda, JotForm) are limited: only email, no flexible logic, data stored with a third party. Our solution gives full control over code and data. You decide channels, log retention, escalation rules. Full control over data and logic.

What's Included in the Service

• Designing routing logic according to your department structure.
• Responsive form layout on React/Vue/plain HTML.
• Backend FeedbackRouter class with email, Telegram, Slack support.
• Logging all inquiries to database.
• Auto-reply to client with department info.
• Documentation and 2 hours post-launch support.
• Development cost from 150,000 RUB for a basic version.

Work Process

1. Analysis — examine how departments receive emails.
2. Design — draw routing scheme, approve with you.
3. Development — backend class, frontend form, integrations.
4. Testing — all scenarios (wrong category, empty fields, mail failure).
5. Deployment — upload to your server, configure cron for log cleanup.

Want a similar form on your site? Contact us — we will evaluate your project within one business day. Get a consultation on integration with your CRM or 1C. For urgent orders, call us to clarify details within an hour.

Learn more about configuring Laravel mail drivers in the official documentation.

Email Campaign Integration: Why Does It Often Break?

We’ve observed that a trigger email sent 10 minutes after registration converts 4–5 times better than the same email sent after 24 hours. This isn’t a marketing myth—it’s mechanics: while the user is still warm, while they remember the context. But most integrations with email services are built like this: form submits → synchronous HTTP request to API → if the API is slow, the user waits 3 seconds → the email either goes out or doesn’t, nobody knows. In one project, we saw a 30% drop in conversion simply because the email service responded with 504 and Laravel’s queue driver wasn’t configured. Lost emails often hit customers silently – no log, no alert, just a missing order confirmation.

If you’re facing lost emails or spam folder issues, order an audit of your current integration – we’ll find bottlenecks within 2 days.

Providers and Their APIs

Unisender — a Russian provider popular in the SMB segment. REST API, simple. Adding a contact: importContacts, sending a transactional email: sendEmail. Important: for transactional emails (order confirmations, password resets), Unisender Go is a separate service with a different API and separate pricing. Mixing bulk and transactional mailings in one stream is bad for domain reputation. Unisender Go handles up to 1000 requests per second.

SendPulse — provides email, SMS, web push, Viber, and Telegram bots through a unified API. Convenient for projects requiring an omnichannel approach. Automation 360 is a visual chain builder; you can trigger automation via API events. The PHP SDK (sendpulse/rest-api-php-sdk) is maintained but updated irregularly – better to use Guzzle directly.

Mailchimp — a choice for international audiences and marketing teams accustomed to the Mailchimp ecosystem. Transactional email via Mandrill (a subsidiary service). Marketing API v3 for list, tag, and campaign management. Webhooks for opens, clicks, unsubscribes, bounces.

SMS. For Russia: SMSCenter, MTS Exolve, Devino Telecom, SMS Aero. Their APIs are similar: a send method with phone, message, sender parameters (sender name must be registered separately with the operator). One nuance: the sender name must be registered through the aggregator with a contract – otherwise SMS won’t be sent on MTS/MegaFon/Beeline networks.

How to Build an Integration That Doesn’t Lose Emails?

Separate Transactional and Marketing Streams

Transactional emails (order confirmations, password resets, delivery status) go through a dedicated sender domain or subdomain tx.example.com. Marketing campaigns go through mail.example.com or news.example.com. If a marketing campaign receives many spam complaints, it should not affect the reputation of the transactional stream. According to SendGrid documentation, transactional messages should be sent through a dedicated IP pool to prevent cross-contamination.

Queue and Retry

Any call to the email API goes through a queue (Laravel Queue, Bull, Celery). If Unisender returns a 503, the job retries after 5 minutes, then 15, then 60. After 5 failed attempts, it goes to a dead letter queue with an alert. The user already received their 200 OK and knows nothing about the issue. This approach reduces bounce rate on projects to 0.5%.

Example Laravel job:

public function handle(): void
{
    try {
        $response = Http::post(config('services.unisender.email_url'), $this->params);
        if ($response->failed()) {
            $this->release(300); // retry after 5 min
        }
    } catch (\Throwable $e) {
        $this->release(300);
    }
}

Templates

We store templates in code (Blade, Twig, React Email), not in the provider’s interface. Reasons: versioning via Git, browser preview without sending, testability. For complex templates with dynamic content — react-email with export to HTML via @react-email/render.

Validation and Consent

Before adding a contact to a list — double opt-in (confirmation email). Store the confirmation timestamp in your own database. Upon unsubscription — synchronously unsubscribe both at the provider and in your database. Ignoring webhook unsubscriptions is a direct path to account suspension at the provider. All processes comply with Федеральный закон № 152-ФЗ «О персональных данных».

Deliverability Monitoring and DKIM Setup

Connect provider webhooks for events: bounce (hard and soft), spam_complaint, unsubscribe. Hard bounce — immediately mark the email as invalid in your database, stop sending. Soft bounce 3 times in a row — same. Metrics: open rate, click rate, bounce rate, unsubscribe rate — review at least once a week. Our certified engineers configure alerts in Grafana/Prometheus.

DKIM configuration steps:

1. Generate a key pair (e.g., openssl genrsa -out private.key 2048).
2. Publish the public key in DNS as a TXT record for the selector (e.g., mail._domainkey.tx.example.com).
3. Provide the selector to the provider (SendGrid, Mailgun, Unisender).
4. Verify with dig TXT mail._domainkey.tx.example.com.

SPF, DKIM, DMARC must be configured separately for each stream. We use subdomains with different DNS records.

Why Is It Important to Separate Streams?

If you send a marketing campaign from the same domain as transactional emails and receive spam complaints, you risk getting the domain blocked — and users will stop receiving even order confirmations. SPF, DKIM, DMARC (Sender Policy Framework, DomainKeys Identified Mail, Domain‑based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) must be configured separately for each stream. In one project, a marketing blast with 12% spam complaints blocked the transactional domain for 48 hours — we had to re‑authenticate with Google and Yandex.

What Does the Integration Scope Include?

• Audit of current communication streams and domain reputation (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
• Provider and schema selection: transactional vs marketing traffic
• Configuration of SPF, DKIM, DMARC DNS records
• Development of email templates (HTML + dynamic content)
• Backend integration via queues and API
• Webhook setup for deliverability and complaints
• Operations documentation and team training
• Deliverability guarantee and post‑launch support

We deliver production‑ready documentation, access to monitoring dashboards, and a handover session with your engineers. Our certified engineers provide a 30‑day post‑launch health check guarantee.

Timelines and Cost

Cost is calculated individually after audit. We provide turnkey service: from analysis to production monitoring. Contact us for a free engineer consultation — we’ll evaluate your project and give accurate timelines. Over 7 years of experience in email service integration, 50+ projects implemented. Order a free audit of your current integration and receive a report with recommendations and estimated savings.