Feeling Disconnected
Last August when Ellen Hobbs discovered a $300 charge on her credit card bill from Amazon.com for merchandise she didn't order, the 34-year-old video game producer did the obvious: She turned to the bookseller's Web site for a phone number. After scouring the site, she came up empty-handed--and irate. When Hobbs finally found the obscure number through the search engine Google, she vowed to make it available by creating a special page on her Web site, Cliche Ideas (www.cli cheideas.com/amazon.htm). Her Web page has become a popular spot, receiving a peak 3,000 hits in January.
To cut costs, many E-tailers are turning away from toll-free telephone help lines. A July report from Jupiter Research shows that 1 in 4 E-commerce sites doesn't display a telephone number clearly on its customer service page. Amazon has taken a more aggressive approach: "They basically just push you into E-mail," says Bob Chatham, principal analyst with Forrester Research. For its part, Amazon says the number is there. "It's not prominent, but it's definitely in a few places," says Kim Rachmeler, Amazon's vice president of worldwide customer service.
So what do you do if you have a question? These hide-the-number companies are fielding customer queries with E-mail, chat services, and search engines. Chat software enables sales reps to synchronize their browsers with needy consumers: They can view the customer's screen during their "conversation." This innovation has become widely accepted by the financial services industry. Sites like H&R Block and Wells Fargo use chat programs to assist customers with complex tax and mortgage forms. And technology preserves the anonymity that makes the online purchasing process so appealing to many people. "This is sort of like the ATM," says Rachmeler. "Some customers just find it more efficient to solve their problems on their own." That is, until things go awry.
The new tools don't help every time. Jupiter Research found that only 54 percent of sites with E-mail service responded to customer queries within 24 hours. And 28 percent took at least three days to reply--or never responded at all. Self-service engines yielded similarly fruitless results. Nearly half of Jupiter's online shoppers couldn't find the answer to a question when they turned to a self-help tool.
Still, shoppers dependent on E-mail need not feel powerless. Consumers can dash off an E-mail to the site prior to purchase to see if the company shows signs of neglect. It's a bad sign when a company fails to send an immediate response confirming the receipt of your E-mail. Alex Stein, president and CEO of Gomez Inc., which helps companies make their Web sites more user friendly, urges consumers to take their business elsewhere if the response seems spit out by an automated system. You could also take the same approach as Ellen Hobbs: Type "company name.com" and "customer service" and "phone" into Google. If you find the number, E-mail it to everyone you know.
This story appears in the August 18, 2003 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.