Go Ahead, Try & Contact Us?

27 November 2007 Written By: Jim KukralComments: Comments

Make money teaching a class at Prfessor.com

Is there a reason that you, or your company, make it so difficult to be contacted?

There is? Why? What, you don’t want my business?

Assuming you’re selling something… there’s no conceivable reason to me that you would want to make it difficult for a customer to get in touch with you.

Yesterday I had to do some online shopping for a company to host my video ads I’m going to run for a client in 6 online major newspaper markets. Here’s my short saga.

Naturally I started at Doubleclick.

  • Check out this super-long web form that I was NOT going to fill out. Forget it.
  • So I called the toll-free number and left a message that I needed assistance asap.
  • Closing in on 24-hours later, I have received no contact from them.

Sure, they need to route the sales lead to the right sales person and all that, but you know what? I need help… now, not in 48-hours.

So what did I do out of frustration? I went to the next company.

I went to Adinterax.com, and went straight to their contact form. I needed to talk to somebody, quick. But as you can see from the screenshot below, the only way you can contact them is by… Snail mail? Wow.

After those two experiences, I’ve called a few others, and everything went sorta fine. Hats off to Eyewonder for not only picking up the phone (live person) when I called, but actually giving me pricing and answering questions when I called.

Not being easy to contact is just plain old dumb. Even me, the super Internet geek that I am, often just wants to get on the phone and find an answer quick. I don’t want to have to fill out yet another long web form. I don’t want to have to send an email or read through a forum. I just want a quick answer.

I make my contact details VERY easy to find on this site (home page right column). Why? Because I want you to contact me and let me help you solve your online marketing problems.

Is there a reason you don’t?

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  • It's amazing how stupid some companies are. This happens with online recruiting too. Some employers make you jump through 27 hoops to apply for a job - if you can even find the right page to apply from. It's so frustrating for applicants. Companies might think that making it hard to apply for a job will weed out less than stellar candidates, but what it really does is weed out people who are busy. Busy people are probably the ones you want to hire, not people who can spend an hour looking around your Careers page.
  • I wish hosting companies would do this and then actually answer their phone. There are only a few that I have found that do. Some are located right in my area. The midwest is at least good for some things, like customer service.
  • VERY good post Jim. You might have your contact information posted, but it's not that easy for some of us :)

    Anyways, I totally know what you mean by getting an answer for "simple questions" that you don't want to search for. I do the same as you, but I'm shy when it comes to calling, so I ask on forums. The replies I get back isn't even the answer, but more like "go search the forums yourself!"

    -Mike
  • I so agree with that, nothing more irritating that being met with some long-winded, dumb-ass form to fill when all you want is someone to answer a simple question. And if i have to wait that 48 hours for them to get into the act, i have already lost interest and moved on Thank you very much!
  • Great post. It is amazing how poor some sites are. Another amazingly bad practice: I find some sites where you are a customer and logged in and they ask for information (phone, email... they already have on file). You really understand they don't have a clue about even the most basic concepts of interacting in the internet age.
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