What this means for your practice
Treat confirmation and team receipt as part of the same journey. Explain the next step without claiming receipt until the submission has actually succeeded.
An example to discuss with your team
Simulate success, network failure and a repeated click in an authorised test environment. Confirm each state avoids misleading the visitor about receipt.
What to discuss with your agency
Ask the agency to demonstrate success, a network failure and repeated clicking in a test environment. What does reception receive in each case? The visitor should know whether to wait, try again or use an appropriate alternative. That clarity can reduce avoidable chasing without promising a response time the team cannot support.
Put the brief into practice
Decide what the visitor should see after the form is accepted and what the receiving team must see before the journey is considered complete. The confirmation should explain the actual next step, any useful reference and an appropriate contact route. Avoid promising a reply time unless the practice has agreed and can support that wording. Ask the agency to distinguish a definite failure from an uncertain result, with recovery messages that do not encourage unnecessary duplicates. Test a repeated click, interruption and successful submission using fictional details in an authorised environment.
Follow each result into the team's working list. If the website accepts the enquiry but another handover fails, give that gap an owner and a fallback rather than leaving it behind a success message. Review calls asking whether a message arrived alongside duplicate submissions. They may reveal a confirmation problem even when the form's technical success rate looks strong.
How to check the result
Measure duplicate submissions and enquiries asking whether an earlier message was received.
Turn reading into a next step
Your action checklist
Work through these checks with your team or supplier. Tick the ones you have resolved and leave unknowns open.
Record what you know, what is still missing and the answer you need from your team or supplier.
Use project decisions only, without personal, patient or confidential details. Entries stay in this page and are not submitted to Kay & Co. Copy or download before leaving; this page does not save your notes.
Further reading
These sources provide background for the topic. The practice examples and checklist are illustrative planning suggestions from Kay & Co.
Related guides
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