A care home enquiry form should capture who is asking, who the care is for, the broad level of need, the timescale, how the stay would be funded, and the best way and time to reply. AI can then draft a warm first reply from those answers, which a person reviews and sends within your response-time target.
Keep the form short. A family searching for care is often tired and worried, and every extra field costs you completed forms. The skill is separating what you need to answer the first message from what you can only learn on a call or tour, then letting AI do the drafting while a person owns the conversation.
The fields worth asking for, and why each is there
Here is a template for a residential care home. Mark each field as required or optional on your own form, and drop anything you will not actually use in the first reply.
| Field | Type | Why you ask |
|---|---|---|
| Your name | Short text, required | So the reply is addressed properly |
| Your relationship to the person | Choice: myself, parent, partner, other family, professional, friend | Changes the tone and who you can speak to |
| Email and phone | Required: at least one | The reply route |
| Best way and time to be contacted | Choice plus free text | Avoids calling during a hospital visit or work meeting |
| First name and age band of the person needing care | First name optional; age band choice | Lets you reply personally without collecting more than needed |
| Type of support wanted | Choice: personal care, memory support, nursing care, short stay or respite, not sure | Tells you whether you can meet the need |
| Where the person is now | Choice: at home, in hospital, in another care setting, other | Signals urgency and discharge deadlines |
| When care might start | Choice: within a week, within a month, in the next three months, just looking | Sets how fast you reply and what you offer |
| How the stay will be paid for | Choice: self-funded, publicly funded, health funded, not sure, other | Fee conversation and eligibility |
| Anything you would like us to know | Free text, optional, 500 characters | Catches the human detail |
| Permission to reply, plus a separate opt-in for news | Required tick box for the reply; optional, unticked box for updates | Records what the person asked for; newsletters need their own yes |
That is eleven fields, and none asks for a diagnosis or a history. "Type of support wanted" still reveals something about a person's health, though, so treat every submission as sensitive information rather than an ordinary sales lead. On the tick boxes: data-protection law offers several lawful bases besides consent, including taking steps a person has asked for before a contract, so let your data-protection lead decide which one covers replying to an enquiry. Keep the newsletter or updates box separate and unticked, because that is a different use with a different answer. Two principles keep the rest safe. First, ask for the broad level of need and a rough timescale, never diagnoses, medication or detailed history. Second, say on the form what happens to the answers: who sees them, how long you keep them, and that you will contact the person who filled it in. Your data-protection lead should approve the wording, and the staff policy for AI in care homes covers what may be pasted into a tool.
Fields to leave off
Postcode of the person's home, full date of birth, government identifier numbers, bank details, a medical history box, and "upload documents" buttons all invite sensitive data you do not need at this stage. A hospital discharge letter can wait for a real assessment under your own consent process.
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Buy nowFee and funding questions: how to ask without scaring people off
Funding is the question families most want answered and least want to be asked. Frame it as helping you give the right information, and make every option feel normal. Wording that works on a form: "How is care likely to be paid for? This helps us explain the right next steps. You can choose 'not sure'." An unsure family is not a poor lead; they may need guidance, and a kind explanation of who to speak to may be what earns the tour.
Do not let AI invent figures. If you publish a starting weekly fee or a typical range, paste that exact wording into the prompt as approved text. If your fees vary by room and need, the reply should say so and offer a conversation. Where funding comes from a public body, your home may have specific wording on eligibility and top-up payments; get your manager or finance lead to supply the approved paragraph, then keep it in a "fixed paragraphs" document that AI can quote word for word.
What the first reply must do
A good first reply does five jobs in under 150 words: thanks them by name, shows that someone read what they wrote, answers the one question they most need answered, offers a specific next step, and gives a direct contact. It does not push a brochure, and it does not pretend to know their situation.
The prompt to draft it
You are drafting a first reply for a care home manager to review and send. Use ONLY the form answers and the approved paragraphs below.
Rules:
- Warm, plain English, under 150 words, signed by [manager name].
- Address the sender by first name. Mention the person needing care only by the first name given, or "your mum/dad/partner" if that is how the sender describes them.
- Answer the type of support asked about, using the approved paragraph for it. If we do not offer it, say so kindly and suggest they ask us about other options.
- Never quote a price except the approved starting-fee wording. Never promise availability.
- Offer two next steps: a short phone call and a visit. Give the contact route they chose.
- If the start date is within a week or the person is in hospital, say we will ring the same day.
- Do not include medical advice, promises or comments on the person's condition.
Form answers:
[paste]
Approved paragraphs:
[paste]Three drafts the prompt might produce
The examples below are illustrative, with invented details, and each one is followed by what the manager would change.
Example A: an urgent hospital discharge. Form: daughter, mum in hospital, start within a week, memory support, funding not sure, prefers a phone call after 17:00. Draft: "Dear [first name], thank you for getting in touch, and I am sorry to hear your mum is in hospital. We do support people living with memory loss. Because you mentioned a start within a week, I would like to ring you this evening after 17:00 to talk through what you need and answer questions about funding, which is often confusing. You are welcome to visit, too, and we can arrange a time that works around hospital visits. My direct line is [number]. Kind regards, [manager name]." What the manager fixes: confirms there is a room or at least a conversation to be had, removes "I am sorry" if the sender has not said it is serious, and checks the call can really happen at 17:00.
Example B: a resident asking for themselves. Form: self, age band 80 to 89, personal care, in the next three months, self-funded, email only. Draft addresses the sender directly and offers a visit with lunch. The manager checks it does not slip into talking about "your relative".
Example C: a service you do not offer. Form: nursing care needed, but your home provides residential care only. Draft: kindly explains the home's service, suggests asking the hospital team or the person's funding contact about nursing homes, and offers to answer other questions. The manager should insist this reply is sent, because a polite redirect builds a reputation that people remember.
Tour booking without back-and-forth emails
Many homes lose time on "when are you free?" threads. Offer three tour slots in the reply, written as plain options ("Tuesday 11:00, Wednesday 14:00 or Saturday 10:30"), and add a booking link if your form tool supports one. Keep the slots in a short document that the prompt can read. Time slots should come from your real diary, and AI must never guess a day or time.
For the tour itself, a small checklist helps: who meets them, which rooms they will see, whether lunch is offered, what you will say about fees, and what you will send afterwards. A good follow-up the next morning is more valuable than a polished brochure. If you want to see how a lead sheet looks once enquiries start coming in, the enquiry-to-pipeline tutorial builds one.
A response-time target you can actually hit
Choose a target in working hours, not a vague "quickly". Illustrative: reply personally within two working hours from 08:00 to 18:00 on weekdays, by 10:00 the next working day for weekend enquiries, and a same-day phone call for hospital discharge or start-within-a-week flags. Write the target on the page where the form lives, because it sets expectations and gives your team something to be measured against.
Say an enquiry arrives at 15:40 on a Friday and nobody is free until Monday. If your target says "next working day" a family should not read that as "four days". Cover Friday afternoon with a rota slot, an out-of-office on the form's confirmation email stating when they will hear from you, or help from an after-hours line. The tutorial on after-hours answering explains the options for calls outside office hours.
How to measure it
Add two columns to your enquiry sheet: "received at" and "first personal reply at". Subtract. Check the time zone first: Tally's Google Sheets export, for one, records submission times in UTC, so a sheet in local time needs a conversion column or every gap will be out by your time-zone difference. At the end of each month, look at the median and the slowest five. If the slowest are all Friday afternoons, you have found the gap. Fixing a gap in cover is cheaper than a better template.
The sheet that sits behind the form
Every form submission should drop into one spreadsheet, whether through your form tool's built-in export or an automation. Keep these columns: date received, name, contact, relationship, support type, start timescale, funding route, urgency flag, draft reply sent (yes/no), first personal reply time, tour booked, tour date, outcome, and a notes cell. Use a drop-down for outcome: tour booked, waiting list, not suitable, chose elsewhere, no reply. A one-line reason when an enquiry does not go ahead is some of the most useful data your home can collect.
Say a 40-bed home receives 25 enquiries in a month. If 18 get a first reply within the target, 14 go on a call, 9 tour and 3 move in, then the leaks are visible: of 25, seven waited too long; of the 14 on a call, only 9 toured. Illustrative figures like these tell you which step to fix. If calls do not become tours, the problem is the call, not the form.
Pick a form tool that sends answers straight to a sheet. Tally, for example, adds a new row to a connected Google Sheet for every completed submission, and its help centre says that integration is free for all users; partial submissions do not trigger it, and new rows go into the first blank row it finds, so sort by the timestamp rather than trusting the row order. The Tally prompt tutorial shows how to build the form, and it works for a short enquiry form like this one.
A filled-in form, start to finish
Here is one illustrative submission, so you can see how the template behaves with real-looking answers. A son fills in the form at 21:15 on a Tuesday. Relationship: son. Contact: email, evenings. First name of the person: given, age band 80 to 89. Support: memory support. Where now: at home, with a carer visiting twice a day. Start: within a month. Funding: not sure. Free text: "Mum has started leaving the house at night. We are worried but she is very independent."
Three things stand out. The free text is the most important field on the form: it tells you the family fears risk and loss of independence. A reply that opens with a brochure will miss that. The funding answer "not sure" means the reply should offer an explanation, not a price. And "evenings, by email" means a phone call at 10:00 is the wrong first move. The AI draft should therefore thank him, acknowledge that balancing safety with independence is a hard thing, say that the home supports people with memory loss, offer a short call in the evening or a visit with his mother if she would like to come, and mention that the team can explain how funding works. The manager checks that the reply does not mention "leaving the house at night" more bluntly than the son did, and adds a personal line from their own experience if they have one.
The morning-after message once a family has toured
The second message is where enquiries often go quiet, because nobody owns it. Have the tool draft a follow-up the morning after every tour, using three facts typed by the person who led it: what the visitors asked about, what they liked, and any promise made ("I will send the menu"). A short prompt does it:
Draft a 100-word follow-up email from [manager name] to a family who toured yesterday. Use only these notes: [three facts]. Thank them for coming, answer the one question they asked, repeat any promise we made with a date, and invite them to ring me directly. No pressure, no price quotes, no new claims.A sample output, with invented details: "Dear [first name], thank you for visiting yesterday and for the thoughtful questions about evenings and night staffing. As promised, I have attached the sample weekly menu and I will send the activities list by Friday. If it would help to talk through anything with your family, I am on [number]. Kind regards, [manager name]." The manager edits the promise so the date is honest. If a promise appears that the visit notes do not contain, delete it.
Handling an enquiry you cannot take
Some enquiries are never going to be a fit: no vacancy for months, a need you are not registered to meet, or a funding level you cannot accept. Record it as "not suitable" with the reason, and send the redirect reply anyway. Add a line to your fixed paragraphs for each reason, such as "We do not currently have vacancies; I can add you to our waiting list and let you know if that changes." Ask the family before adding them to a list, and do not keep their details longer than your policy allows. Families remember being treated with courtesy, and it is the cheapest marketing you will do.
Making the form work on a phone
Many families will fill the form in on a phone, often late in the evening. Test it yourself on a phone, outdoors, with one thumb. Check the choice fields are tap-friendly, the free-text box does not hide behind the keyboard, and the confirmation page states your response target and a direct phone number for urgent situations. Put a link to the form on your homepage, your "contact us" page and the end of any page describing a service. Do not hide it behind a "download our brochure" step.
Where AI drafts go wrong with enquiries
It over-reassures. Phrases like "we are sure we can meet your needs" are a promise you may not be able to keep. Add "do not say we can definitely meet their needs; say we would like to understand them" to the prompt.
It mirrors distress badly. A reply that says "I understand how difficult this must be" to every message reads as a template. Let the manager add one genuine line, or leave the line out.
It misreads the sender. "My husband and I" might mean two people needing care. Read the free-text answer yourself before approving.
It forgets the privacy line. A reply should not repeat sensitive detail the sender typed. If a family wrote about a diagnosis, the reply can say "thank you for explaining the situation" rather than repeating it.
Staff paste identifiers into a public tool. The draft needs only a first name and the form's broad answers. Keep surnames, phone numbers and addresses out of the prompt. The guide to stopping tools training on business data covers the settings to check in the tool itself.
A fortnight to set it up
Day 1 to 2: decide the fields and write the consent wording. Day 3: build the form and the sheet. Day 4 to 5: write the fixed paragraphs, covering each support type, your starting fees wording, and the funding explanation, then have the manager approve them. Day 6 to 7: test the prompt with six invented enquiries, including one you cannot help and one urgent. Week 2: run it live with the manager sending every reply, log response times, and review the first ten enquiries together. After that, add the morning-after tour follow-up described above, using the same approach.
If the form tool or your care software already includes an enquiry feature, compare it with this template before paying for anything new; the checklist of questions for care home software lists what to ask. And if you would rather map your own enquiry route with someone, that is what my AI implementation consultation is for.
Enquiry form questions from care home managers
Should the form ask about the person's health condition?
Ask only for the level of need in broad terms, such as 'help with personal care' or 'memory support', and let families choose from a list. Detailed health information is for a proper assessment later, under your own consent and records process, not an open web form.
Can the AI quote our fees in the first reply?
Only if you paste approved fee wording into the prompt and a person checks the draft. Fees depend on room, level of need and funding route, so a safer first reply gives the starting range you publish and offers a call or tour to talk through the specifics.
How fast should we reply to an enquiry?
Set a target you can meet every day, such as a personal reply within two working hours during the week and by 10:00 the next working day for weekend enquiries. A family in crisis may contact several homes in one sitting, so a quick, human reply matters.
Who should send the reply, the AI or a person?
A person. AI drafts the message from the form answers and your approved wording, and the manager or the person running enquiries reads it, adjusts the tone, and sends it. Sending without a read-through risks a wrong fee, a wrong promise or an insensitive line.
Further reads
- Care Home Activities Calendar: Plan a Month With AI and Resident Input — Gives tour visitors a real picture of daily life to look at.
- Care Home Newsletter Ideas: AI-Drafted Family Updates With Consent — Keeps in touch with families after the first enquiry stage.
- AI for Care Homes: A Registered Manager's 90-Day Implementation Plan — Places enquiry handling in a wider rollout plan.
- How to Write a Customer Newsletter With AI in 30 Minutes — A simple way to stay in touch with people on the waiting list.
- AI for Dementia Care Providers: Life-Story Profiles and Activity Plans — What to do once a new resident moves in.
- AI Consultant for a Care Home: Do You Need One, and What to Ask — When it is worth getting outside help with a set-up like this.
- How Can AI Help in Care Homes? Ten Back-Office Uses — Ten care home back-office jobs where AI saves real time, each with an example, a check and a clear line on what stays with staff.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Tally help centre page on the Google Sheets integration (free on all plans, one row per submission, timestamps in UTC) and data-protection definitions of consent, lawful bases and health data, all checked 4 November 2026; general enquiry-handling practice in care settings. No vendor prices are quoted.