Subscribe
“Your World. Delivered.” …many mouse-clicks away
Author: Jensie Grigsby
September 25, 2006
It may not make much sense, but I think we’ve all gone to a company’s website only to snatch their 800 number from it. Why would we want to search for answers online, when we can phone a toll-free friend? Maybe we’re lazy. Maybe we’re programmed. In most cases, it’s because we want to talk to a human. That was my case.
I’m not the main account holder for my household’s phone bill, but my name is on the bill, and I wanted to ask a question…about the bill…to a human. So I went to AT&T’s website. Spotting the protocol "Contact Us," I clicked it. No 800 number. Instead, I must select if I’m residential or commercial, and I forget the other choices. Ok, I’m residential, now for the 800 number. I click again, but no digits. My phone number is apparently now wanted by the phone company, at least by area code and the first three digits. Is this a joke? Still game, I enter 847-292 and click on. In the short time it takes for the page to ‘continue’, I wallow. Where is this leading? Where is this going? Why is this happening? God, why have you forsaken me? Overboard? Yes, but that’s how I felt. Doesn’t AT&T know how quickly users lose their patience online? (About as quickly as they do over the phone) With a closed eyeball roll–you know the one–I’m taken to a page that looks suspicious of an 800 number, but there isn’t one. There is a link however. A beautiful gateway, among others, that calls to me from the other side. A "Call Us" link, and I click it. At last, my darling, 1-8-0-0 something, something, something – something, something, something, something…you are there! After five pages, one dropdown, one manual entry, and six or so mouse-clicks, next time, won’t you please be there for me, oh say, on the home page?
2 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Very very VERY basic usability…
Some usability concepts are so basic that some companies seem to forget. The most important of them is Give your users what they are looking for.
ATT, supposedly a communications company, seemed not to have grasped that yet, keeping the…
Trackback by Standing Out In The Crowd — September 26, 2006 @ 9:01 am
They have to torture you on the web site before they torment you via the phone.
Comment by Kim D — September 26, 2006 @ 1:41 pm