Chad’s Blog
Pragmatic Technologies for Life and Business Success®
Do you still use the phone book to find a company’s phone number? I personally forgot what one looks like and prefer to save the drawer space for other use. Instead, I rely on the Internet to get phone numbers when I need to contact a given organization. I find it irritating and surprising when companies make it a real challenge to be able to contact them. When I tried reaching AT&T the other day, there was no easy way for me to contact them from their home page. I had to spend the time navigating the site and aggravating myself before finding their phone number. Verizon makes it easier as they enabled the “Contact Us” link at the bottom left of the screen. Apple truly got it! They display the phone# as well as easy links to contact them.
How easy is it to contact you by phone or email or even get your address?
Take a look at the examples below or visit our web site for an effective example.
(click on images to enlarge):
I think some companies do this on purpose. Have you tried finding contact information on Amazon.com? Impossible. With some sites I end up sending a nasty note to the webmaster.
Of course they do it on purpose. Many websites are specifically designed to take you through a labrynth in order to locate a phone number. This is in hopes that you stumble upon a reasonable answer to your question (or give up in frustration) before you find the number. This allows them to minimize actual human contact as much as possible.
So with this in mind, other than making sure to incorporate easy ways of contacting us on our own web site, how can we as consumers change this absurd corporate mindset?