Hiding your phone number is not self-service success

Believe it or not, people still do use their phones to call each other. But there is a growing tendency for companies to hide their phone number online.

Many online companies don’t want to provide a phone number for their customers to call them. Instead, they ruthlessly push their knowledge base, or provide an (often) useless form and then take ages to respond.

It’s all in the name of cost-saving and efficiency, but this is a rather short-term strategy since it decreases customer loyalty overall. Your customers may stay with you as long as you have the lowest price, or they have no choice, but they’ll easily switch to a competitor once something better comes along.

You be may cutting costs in the short-term, but you’ll struggle to retain long-term customers.

What is customer self-service?

Self-service means:

“a type of electronic support that allows end users to use technology to access information and perform routine tasks without requiring the assistance of a live customer service representative.” (TechTarget)

The advantages of this type of customer support is that customers have 24/7 access to your support, it’s immediate, and frees up your agents for more complex tasks. It is true that self-service is generally cheaper that agent-customer interactions.

Customer self-service is best used alongside traditional customer service methods, such as an email helpdesk and phone support, rather than as a replacement for human-to-human interaction.

Supporting, not replacing humans

Self-service presents possibilities for automating some functions with technology, allowing your staff to focus on more important tasks.

For example, McDonald's in the UK now provide self-service kiosks where customers can order their own food. You take your receipt and collect your order once your number comes up. There’s still the option to order food at the counter, for those customers who prefer a human being.

This system is very efficient and allows McDonald's to serve more customers, without distancing themselves from their customers or sacrificing quality. It looks like McDonald’s has thought about how to create a better customer experience.

Similarly with online knowledge bases, they are there to increase efficiency for your customers. You want your customers to purchase your software automatically using your website, rather than having one of your staff members painstakingly process each transaction.

But if your customers run into any trouble, your staff are always on hand to assist.

Examples of accessible companies

Amazon was the top company for customer service in the UK in 2016. They’re definitely more popular for their customer service, than their reputation for how they treat their employees.

Their website makes good use of online forms to funnel customers into the solutions for some of the most frequent queries, such as returning items or problems with devices.

There’s lots of contextual help and knowledge base topics available, but failing that, they don’t make it difficult to get in touch.

Amazon gives you several options for contacting them.

It’s more efficient for them to call you, so all you have to do is fill in the form and they’ll call you back.

While there are many examples of excellent customer service out there, it’s hard to find a company that actually wants to talk to its customers.

Web hosting company Bluehost consistently delivers fantastic customer service, with friendly agents and regularly keeping customers informed of business developments through email.

Their online help base is top quality, but it’s no problem if you want to contact Bluehost directly.

It’s a rare sight. You can call Bluehost about anything you like!

Examples of distant companies

If you have a problem with event ticketing company Ticketmaster, good luck trying to contact them.

Their online help base has an extremely confusing user experience design with no clear hierarchy. It seems to close back in on itself like the mythical Ouroboros.

Image: By anonymous medieval illuminator; uploader Carlos adanero [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

There is no way to call their customer service. If you have a problem, your only choice is to fill in a form, which is buried deep in the help content.

Contacting Ticketmaster online requires filling in lots of fields, suggesting that their help base and customer ticketing system are not integrated with each other.

It makes for a most frustrating customer experience, and you don’t feel as though Ticketmaster values your business. They seem more focused on preventing ticket fraud than on valuing their customers.

Facebook has no discernible customer service unless you’re using their paid advertising service. Even then, they take a very long time to get back to you and their agents aren’t particularly helpful. There is, of course, no way to call them.

Facebook can perhaps be forgiven this due to the fact that they provide a free service for their users, although they are well compensated by way of personal user details.

The importance of choice

One of the most compelling reasons to provide a self-service and a call option for your customers is to give them more choice.

In this late age of online customer service, there are many actions that customers expect to be automated. If you lack a self-service option, customers may think your company is falling behind by not investing in the latest technology.

You don’t want to force your customers to call you but it’s important to have the choice available. You might want a couple of layers of options for your customers to go through if you are a very large company, so you can filter out the enquiries that could be solved by your website.

Customers don’t want to call you

You may think your customers will be calling you night and day if you provide your phone number, but it will happen less than you think.

Of all the problems customers experience, a business only hears from 4% of these customers (Help Scout). Many more people will simply leave your company without trying to get help for their problem.

The reality is, many people actually prefer to serve themselves, because it avoids a time-wasting interaction with your support agents. And nobody likes waiting on hold!

Final remarks

In customer service, you have to give more than you take. Contrary to popular belief, customer service is not a department where you should be cutting costs. This is the public face of your company, and you must be accessible to your customers to show that you value them.

If you don’t make your company phone number easily available on your website, you risk making your customers more vulnerable to scams in their efforts to get in touch with you. They will think all you care about is cutting costs, which doesn’t present a very positive image of your brand.

It’s also no bad thing to have daily interactions with your customers to temperature check whether you’re still meeting their needs. It’s all about being customer-centric, and providing the right kind of help where it’s needed.

KnowledgeOwl provides handy knowledge base software to help you optimize your customer self-service experience. Take us for a free spin today.