Why is it still so hard to find a phone number these days?
Are you unintentionally making it difficult for potential clients to contact you? What happens when someone wants to reach you urgently, but can’t find a phone number or email—do they just move on? In this episode, I share real examples and insights on why accessibility matters and how simple changes, like displaying your phone number or streamlining your contact form, can make all the difference in winning or losing business.
Listen to this new 7-minute episode for practical ideas on making it easier for your customers to reach you—so you never miss out on a great opportunity.
If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at [email protected] or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com
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View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/
Why is it still so hard to find a phone number? Listen to this episode. See where I’m going. Hi, it’s Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast.
This has happened to me a few times this week. I wanted a phone number to text someone or to call someone to get help. In one case, I was running late and I wanted to text someone to let them know that I’m running late and could we push the appointment back. And once again, no phone number on the website. In many cases you go to the contact page and it’s just the contact form.
Well, you know what? Some people still want to text you, call you, message you some other way than filling out a contact form. In one case I had an email because we had already had some email back and forth, and I looked at the email signature and guess what? No phone number. No phone number in there.
Now, I don’t know why people don’t have their phone numbers. Some of them, it’s clearly just a conscious knowledge oversight. In other words, you don’t look at your stuff the way other people do. It’s like me, I wrote two books on websites, but I can’t review my own website. I need somebody else to tell me what they see or don’t see because I’m too close. I made it. I know what’s supposed to be there and I’m not looking for what’s not there.
It’s hard for me to find my own typos, but I can find yours very easily because I know what I wrote. My mind corrects it, even if it’s not that correct on the page.
But with a phone number, if you are a Gen Y or a Gen Z and you’re doing business with some Gen X, which if you’re doing weddings, actually I should say if you’re doing bar mitzvahs, quinceañeras, sweet sixteens, you’re definitely doing business with Gen X because those are the parents of those kids. They’re also the older Gen Ys now who could be the parents of those kids. But you could also be dealing with some younger baby boomers who could be helping out or planning an anniversary party or planning a corporate event or something.
And just remember, not everybody likes to do business the way that you do. And you need to make it as easy to do business with you as you can.
And I’ve talked to some people about this who said, I don’t want my phone number on the site because I’m going to get spam calls. Yes, you are. Absolutely. I’m not going to stand here and tell you you’re not going to get spam calls. You are. But you also might get calls from real people who want to speak to somebody right now.
This actually happened to my daughter-in-law last year when they were engaged and getting married. I referred them, if you had listened to the podcast I did about this, and if not, I’ll tell the story again. They needed a dance floor, they needed some high-top café tables, they needed a popcorn machine and glassware and things. And I got them a referral for someone in their area.
And my daughter-in-law reached out and asked to have a phone call with someone because she didn’t know how big of a dance floor or some of the other things. And the company wrote back and said, there’s a catalog on our website. Tell us what you want, we’ll give you a quote. She didn’t know what she wanted. That was the whole point. And they ended up using a different rental company. That company lost a customer because they would not have a phone call with her.
Why did she not call them in the first place? I don’t know. Maybe it was late at night. A lot of people do their planning late at night. Maybe she wanted it scheduled so it was convenient for both of them. Whatever the reason, they refused to have a phone call.
Now I’m guessing their phone number was on the website, but I don’t know. But again, for me, I wanted to text someone to tell them I’m running late. Can’t do it. Can’t find a phone number.
The other day, same thing. And it was a major company too. I think it was either a hotel or a hotel chain or something. And you could click to schedule a call or something. No. I want to talk to somebody now. Like right now. Like I have a problem right now that I wasn’t able to solve on your website. I want to speak to someone.
Or maybe it’s the chatbots, right? The chatbots that you can’t get to a real person. You ever try one of those? You type in, can I speak to a real person now? And it doesn’t give you any way to do that.
I know with mine, with my Ask Alan Anything, if you ask to speak to the real Alan, it gives you my phone number, it gives you my email, it gives you that. Because I programmed it to do that. Because it’s frustrating for me when you can’t get a real person.
So take a look at your website. Or better yet, get a buddy. You get a buddy and you look at their website. Let them look at your website and find out how easy or hard it is to connect with them.
Do you have to just fill out a contact form? Is there no way to email? Like on my website, you can click a button to email me. It’ll open up your email right there. You can go to my contact page, my email address is listed, my phone number is listed. But you can click to dial me all over the site.
Right at the top of the site it has the phone number. You can click to dial, you can click to text me. I’m trying to make it as easy as possible to connect with me because if a customer is trying to reach me, I want to make it as easy as possible for them to use the method that they prefer. Not that I prefer, that they prefer.
We make it easy for our customers to do business the way they want and more of them do that. We make it harder and then they go somewhere else. Like my daughter-in-law going someplace else.
Like somebody’s contact form that I saw today. If you want to reach out to them, and there were probably a dozen fields on there. Yeah, you need that information. No, you don’t need it today.
And I’ve had people say, well the people that’ll fill all that out are more interested. I said, you don’t know that. How do you know that somebody who doesn’t want to fill out all those fields now isn’t as interested as somebody that does? Maybe somebody that does just has more time on their hands.
Maybe somebody else is like, no, I want to start a conversation. And to start a conversation I don’t need to give you all of that. Or maybe there’s fields that are required that they don’t want to give you. Or it’s too hard to answer now, like what’s their vision for the event or all these other more esoteric questions.
Let’s make it easier for people to do business with us. Let’s put a phone number, even though we’re going to get spam calls. Let’s put an email, even though we know we’re going to get junk emails. You have a junk filter, a spam filter already. It’s going to weed out some of those.
I would rather get more of that than make it hard for one customer to try to reach out to me. If I make it hard for one, if I lose one customer, it was not worth all the junk that I avoided.
So think about that. Maybe I’m on a soapbox. Maybe some of you agree with me, maybe some of you don’t. That’s okay. That is life.
But I’m telling you this. If you make it hard for customers to do business with you the way they want, they will choose someone else.
And if you’re okay with that, great. And the next time you get frustrated because you can’t reach out to someone the way you want, it’s time for us all to look in the mirror.
Thanks.
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected] or you can text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
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