Imagine how journalists must feel
Published May 23rd, 2006 in E-PRI had to ring a press office the other day. The only thing was I didn’t have the company in question’s number. Went to their website and searched high and low for the number. My search quickly turned from the press office number to any number at all. Needless to say it was a fruitless search. I ended up turning to the good old reliable Goldenpages.
Normally the argument stands that IT doesn’t play enough of a central role in an organisation. However when it comes to company websites, communications professionals don’t seem to have enough input. Why is usability often sacrificed for looking pretty?
Technorati Tags: Piaras Kelly, PR
6 Responses to “Imagine how journalists must feel”
- 1 Pingback on May 23rd, 2006 at 11:53 am
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It’s something that can drive me demented at times. How hard can it be to publish a name and contact number for media enquiries? The worst offenders are people who just have those web forms for contacting them, no address, email, phone number, nothing. Then there are those who just publish the number of their telesales centre, which you then have to call in order to find the office number. Even having a main office number sometimes isn’t the end of it. It’s amazing how many people manning the phones have no idea who to put you through to. Not their fault, mind you, they’ve obviously never been told. That means having to leave your number and waiting for them to hunt up the right person to call you back. Sometimes it can take the best part of a day just to make a simple enquiry.
I started rejecting link submissions from business websites to search.ie if they didn’t have proper contact details a few months ago. I may, if I ever get the free time, get around to weeding out all the existing business links that don’t have tangible contact details.
The crazy thing, though, is that the real monsters of e-commerce flaunt this rule on a daily basis.
Try finding a telephone number on Amazon or Paypal’s sites.. You may do eventually, but not easily
Hi Michele - The absence of a phone number on Amazon/Paypal etc is not accidental. This is an intentional policy to provide customer service on the web, not by phone. The costs of service each customer service phone call are is in the region of $15-$50, depending on the complexity of the call. The cost of processing such requests by email is a fraction of this amount.
distinction Lilliput amortized gladly.wayward nested
Hi. At times businesses feel very important and believe that world knows them and will find them. We face similar problems while business reporting. Actually few businesses realize the importance of providing information for their own good.