When to use this log
Use the evidence log from the moment your first message goes out. Every contact, reply, meeting, request, payment, delivery, decline and non-reply gets one row. The log keeps signals of different strength apart, so a compliment is never counted as a sale and silence is never counted as rejection. The reasoning is in interpret customer feedback without overstating demand.
How to fill it in
- One row per event, not per message thread.
- Deduplicate people and businesses. Five messages from one person are one person.
- Keep promised and completed payments as separate events. "We'll buy next month" is not a payment.
- Save the original — the exact words or the file — before summarising.
- Never edit an original. If something was wrong, add a correction row.
- Mark the status: reported, original attached, or reviewed.
Example rows
| Date | Person / business | Channel | Event | Original | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 Nov | Hartley Home Goods | Replied | "We do struggle with variants. What would you need from us?" | Original attached | |
| 7 Nov | Northbay Outdoor | Call | Meeting | Spends ~2 h a week fixing feed errors before promotions | Reported |
| 8 Nov | Hartley Home Goods | Quote requested | Asked for a price for 400 rows | Original attached | |
| 9 Nov | Little Fern Toys | Contact form | Declined | "Our platform handles this for us." | Reported |
Summarising the log
At the end of a test, summarise with the denominator: "10 contacted · 3 replied · 1 meeting · 1 quote request · 0 payments reported". Then compare it with the decision rule in your validation plan.