Why customer support information is hidden, sometimes in plain view
For the last 2 months, we have been poring over customer support information that companies make available on their website. Our interest was to find out if it is easy to locate the customer contact information on websites.
What we have found is quite interesting.
Customer Support Information – driven by internal CRM
Companies try to make it easy for their customers to get in touch with them. While the companies try to make it easy for customers to reach them, the process is driven by their own CRM. They try to nudge the customers to a preferred way. Some clearly prefer WhatsApp, some prefer email; some would rather you just called their toll-free number.
Most customers, unless really large consumer hardware brands, are not omni-channel.
Multi-brand companies add another layer of complexity. They expect you to realize the contact details for TV (for instance) are different from AC. You spend time in their website clicking through layers. Good examples are banks. Banks have a very limited set of contact details- one for savings another for credit cards, for example.
WhatsApp is quite ubiquitous. So is email.
Not letting the customer choose
In many cases, we found it very difficult to get the 3 core contact information in one place- support dedicated phone number, dedicated WhatsApp number and email address for support.
Interesting thing about WhatsApp. The number is frequently hidden behind a link- which if you click, will lead to a WhatsApp chat. What about someone like me, who browses mostly on the desktop and does not like WhatsApp on the web?
Another interesting thing we have seen is that contact information keeps changing – in at least 10% of cases, we have seen updates over the last 2 months. In one case, a large consumer durable company changed their customer facing website itself.
There is a clear need for someone to reliably do the heavy-lifting for finding the right customer contact information when you are looking to quickly and painlessly log a service complaint.
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