The difference is commitment, not wording
A contact form asks for a conversation. A quote form asks the visitor to describe a project in enough detail to be priced. Those are different levels of readiness, and a visitor at one will bounce off the other.
Renaming the button from 'Contact Us' to 'Get a Quote' without changing the form is the most common version of this mistake. The label now promises a price and the form still asks 'How can we help?'
When a quote form is right
- The work is specifiable enough that a range is meaningful without a call.
- You genuinely will return a number, not a request for a meeting. If the quote is really a meeting invitation, the form label is a promise you are not keeping.
- Visitors arrive with a defined project rather than a vague problem.
When a contact form is right
- The engagement is consultative and the price depends on a diagnosis you have not done yet.
- The visitor's problem is not yet a specification — most B2B service enquiries are here.
- You would rather have a low-commitment conversation than a high-commitment form nobody completes.
Usually the answer is both
Offering both, clearly labelled, captures visitors at both readiness levels and tells you something useful about each enquiry before you read it. The cost is one extra page and some routing logic.
What does not work is one form with a dropdown asking which one this is. The visitor has already decided; making them classify themselves adds a step without adding information you could not infer.