Two days ago Seth Godin made a blog post titled, “Look me in the eye “. He talked about going to the farmers market and buying spinach from a lady who had grown them herself. His words about this experience were, “The fact that the woman who grew it is the same person as the woman who sold it to me made the transaction fundamentally different than buying the same spinach in a bag at the A&P.” Later he pointed about a company called Conference Calls Unlimited who make sure that they are in contact by phone after each conference call to see how it went.My very first internet shopping experience was about seven years ago. I was a 16 year old buying my first paintball gun. After doing some research online I had an idea of what I wanted and I even borrowed my brother’s credit card to make the transaction. But I didn’t feel comfortable online yet–also I wanted to talk to someone just to say, “yes the Maverik pump gun you are looking is a great choice… if I were you I would get it too”. So, instead of just placing an order online I sorted through all the websites and found two stores that would take a phone call instead of just an email. During my call with the first store, I made my order. It actually cost $10 more than the other stores, but I wasn’t going to do business with a company that would only communicate with me by cold emails.

Earlier this year, I was at lunch with a good friend. I was telling her about FamilyLearn. The issue of ordering stuff online came up. She said, “I would never put my credit card online.” This shocked me. She is a regularinternet user. I knew that she had just recently switched to gmail from hotmail and that she also spends a significant amount of time on MySpace. I asked her what she does when she wants to get something that is online. She said that she looks for a phone number to call and if there isn’t one there she goes somewhere else.

My point in writing down all these experiences is to try and articulate a need that I believe is being largely neglected in the internet world and that I know we have previously neglected at FamilyLearn. I need a phone number sitting right there on my web page saying, “CALL US… We will step you through it”, so that I when I get lost, I am seconds away from help–someone who is looking at the same screen I am looking at. I need someone to just say, “Yes, this is a great decision. I have used this product/service as well and I love it.”

I am not sure why most websites want to hide their phone numbers or not even give them out at all. Maybe the thought is that we want our customers to at least try and figure it out on their own first before they call us. It kind of forces them to learn before they call. Perhaps we are thinking that anyone who can’t figure it out on their own is not a potential customer anyways. After all, we might notbe able to keep up with the phone calls. I say that unless your product or service is absolutly free (eg. google, yahoo, zoho ) leave the calling decision up to your customer. Provide them with a phone number, an email address, a mailing address, and a fax.Solicit your desire to help if they need it, then let them choose the way they want to contact you. If you are feeling like you are getting too many calls then use those calls to figure out what it is that they can’t understand without your help. Customers will stop calling you if your website is intuitive enough, but until it is you need those calls to figure out what you can improve on.

Before starting this blog I decided that I wanted to host it on my own independent server space. I was recommended to BlueHost, a local company here in Orem, UT. My limited knowledge on the internet was a concern to me. After a lot of thought and a little research, I decided to host my blog with bluehost. Because I am not an internet geek, I am not going to try and explain anything technical, but I am in business marketing for school and work and I love to share things that impress me and that have made me a customer. Let me share a thought that I have built on my experience with them.

First off, when you arrive at the BlueHost homepage in the bottom right-hand corner of the page you see a visible box that says, “Questions? BlueHost specializes in customer satisfaction - Call us with your questions Toll Free 24/7″ Then they give you their phone number. This same box appears as your main call to action throughout the website. If this help had not been available to me when I needed it, I can assure you that I would not have made it through the absolutely foreign process required to set up a hosting service, it is a heck of a learning curve for someone who is barely getting comfortable with computers. Most of us who are not total techno geeks (oh, by the way when I say “geek” that is a compliment. On the door of our tech team room at FamilyLearn at work we have a sign that says “Geek Squad”. Geeks rule the world). Anyway Kudo’s to BlueHost for their impeccable service.

If you actually made it to the end of this rambling, I would love to hear what you think.

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