How Do You Want to Contact Us?
4 Comments
A simple "Contact Us" page makes me happy. There's nothing I find more frustrating when I need help from a provider than to find no phone numbers anywhere. OR, only finding a phone number when my issue isn't pressing and I'd rather just drop them an email.
An example of one I love is DirecTV's. A couple times I've had random questions about programming and equipment, so I drop an email. They've always responded within 24 hours. The handful of times I've needed immediate attention, I easily find a phone number (or many), and, luckily, I haven't spent more than a few minutes on hold before speaking to a human.
Cox attempts to do the same under "Customer Support," but I have to click a few times to get where I want, which isn't necessarily a bad thing as much as it's just not as straightforward. Same with Verizon, which has me choose which category my specific problem falls into; thankfully, they offer a "none of the above" option, which seems to always be my choice.
Apple clearly prefers that I call, plus I have to jump through some diagnostic hoops before I'm allowed to submit an email. Dell is the same way, except they won't let me email or join in a 24/7 chat unless I have a service tag. Sure, these are both logical requests of me, but I'd argue that they don't necessarily equate to a frustrated user as the most friendly or efficient.
Anyway, I've noticed that more behemeth companies are straying from what seemingly used to be the "Contact Us on Our Terms" pages, which had a choose-your-adventure style process that may or may not end with actually contacting the company. Maybe I'm just getting to be a more patient user, but as big businesses like CNN and Starbucks start making attempts to interact with their direct users, I'm betting that I wasn't the only person who found convoluted "Contact Us" pages maddening.
Definitely agree.
If I click on a contact page of a standard company, I’m usually satisfied if I can find an email address in addition to a form, a phone number (in real text so my iPhone can find it), a real address, and preferably, a Google map if the web site is of a company with a physical location.
While in some instances this isn’t necessary (i.e. Amazon.com for example), it’s frustrating how infrequently I find such information…
Ok-
2 years ago my identity was stolen and I lost access to my yahoo email. Besides the fact that my life sucked enough because somebody in Morocco was having a field day with my pay pal account, it was WAY too difficult to to get some help from yahoo.
To this day, I don’t have access to that email and I lost some valuable business because of this.
I understand that huge companies want to avoid speaking to customers at all costs, but for christs sake, give me a 900 number or a one-time $10 case fee if I really need help and stop making me jump through hoops.
Great example with DirecTV. I find it frustrating when companies over-engineer their contact us page to the point of having a different potential contact number and method for every possible customer question.
Take United Airlines for example (I’m a consultant and end up needing to talk to these guys far more than any human wants to): Seven different categories, with around seven different sub-categories each. Admittedly, they’ve improved things a lot (I swear they used to have 20 categories), but I’d love it if they were able to look at me as a logged-in user, see that I’m a frequent flyer of a certain status, and tell me: Call us here: xxx-xxx-xxxx.
http://faq.ua2go.com/display/4n/kb/optional/index.asp?tab=opt1&opt=1&r=0.5263438
I whole-heartedly agree. Ease of communication between provider and consumer is paramount in nearly all businesses. Its my number one beef with companies that I vow “never to do business with again!” I’m in the service industry myself, and I’ve found a great resource for information on age old customer service techniques as applied to 21st century business. Its called Mindshare.
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