Customer Contact: Why Are Companies So Afraid of Their Customers?
One of the strangest trends in modern business is the apparent determination of companies to avoid speaking to the very people they are trying to attract.
Deirdre McElligott
7/31/20264 min read
One of the strangest trends in modern business is the apparent determination of companies to avoid speaking to the very people they are trying to attract.
Businesses spend fortunes on advertising, search engine optimisation, social media campaigns and carefully crafted websites. Every element is designed to drive traffic, generate leads and encourage prospective customers to engage with the brand.
Yet once you’ve arrived, many companies seem surprisingly reluctant to let you actually contact them.
Have a question?
Good luck finding someone to ask.
Need clarification before making a purchase? Prepare yourself for a journey.
Over the years I’ve noticed that finding a way to contact some organisations has become something of a dark art. What was once a simple matter of finding a phone number or email address has evolved into a labyrinth of FAQs, chatbots, contact forms and carefully controlled customer journeys that appear designed to prevent conversations rather than encourage them.
The first obstacle is usually the FAQ section.
In theory, FAQs are a great idea. If customers are genuinely asking the same questions repeatedly, providing clear answers can save everyone time.
The problem is that many FAQ sections seem to bear little resemblance to the questions customers actually want answered.
As I scroll through them, I often find myself wondering who asked these questions in the first place.
More importantly, how can they possibly be “frequently asked” if there is no obvious way for customers to ask them?
The answers tend to cover a narrow range of highly specific scenarios while somehow managing to avoid the one issue you’re actually trying to resolve.
Eventually, after exhausting the FAQ section, you discover a contact form.
Relief.
At last, a way to communicate with the company.
Or so it seems.
The form begins innocently enough. “What is your enquiry about?”
A list of options appears. None of them quite fit.
You select the least inappropriate option and move on, only to be presented with another list of increasingly specific choices that again fail to reflect the reason you’re trying to make contact.
Surely there will be an “Other” option?
There isn’t.
So you continue the process, forcing your enquiry into a category chosen by the website rather than one chosen by you.
By this stage you’re no longer focused on getting an answer. You’re focused on completing the form.
The customer journey has become an administrative exercise rather than a conversation.
Occasionally, a company will provide a generic email address, usually something reassuringly simple like info@company.com.
For a moment, hope returns.
Finally, a direct route to another human being.
Then reality sets in.
You know that address is likely receiving hundreds or thousands of messages. Sales enquiries, newsletters, spam, automated notifications and marketing communications are all pouring into the same inbox.
You carefully compose your email, press send and wait. An automated acknowledgement arrives almost instantly.
The actual response often takes considerably longer, if it arrives at all. What strikes me most about all of this is the contradiction.
Many organisations claim that customer experience is central to their business. They talk about customer-centricity, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. They invest heavily in attracting customers to their websites.
Yet the website itself often feels like the digital equivalent of a supermarket self-checkout.
Efficient for the business.
Frustrating for the customer.
Most of us have stood in front of a self-checkout while a robotic voice announces:
“Unexpected item in the bagging area.”
Everything stops. A flashing red light appears.
The machine has successfully identified that a problem exists.
What it hasn’t done is solve it.
You wait for assistance, wondering why something that was supposed to be faster has suddenly become slower.
Many company websites create exactly the same feeling.
The customer encounters a problem. The website acknowledges the possibility that problems occur.
The customer is then directed through a series of increasingly restrictive processes before they are permitted to speak to another human being.
The irony is that the customer often started their journey wanting to buy something. All they needed was a simple answer to a simple question.
The Cost of Avoiding Conversation
The irony is that companies often spend enormous amounts of money attracting visitors to their websites.
Marketing campaigns.
Advertising.
Search engine optimisation.
Social media promotion.
All designed to encourage potential customers to visit.
Then, once those visitors arrive, many businesses make it surprisingly difficult for them to start a conversation.
Every unanswered question is a potential lost sale. Every hidden phone number is a missed opportunity. Every contact form that fails to accommodate a genuine enquiry creates unnecessary friction.
And friction has consequences.
Customers leave. Prospects abandon purchases. Potential advocates become frustrated critics.
All because the organisation made it difficult to have a conversation.
The UXY Insight
Businesses should not fear customer interaction.
They should value it.
Every question represents interest.
Every enquiry represents opportunity.
Every piece of feedback represents insight.
Technology should make customer interaction easier, not harder.
The best customer experiences combine effective self-service with easy access to human assistance when it is needed. Because sometimes customers want information.
Sometimes they want reassurance. Sometimes they simply want to ask a question that doesn’t fit neatly into a dropdown menu.
And when that happens, there should be a way to reach another human being without having to navigate an obstacle course first.
After all, if a business isn’t willing to talk to its customers, why should customers choose to do business with it?