Different Generations = Different Consumers

I've always heard that one of the best things that you can do to "legitimize" your web business is to provide consumers with a phone number and physical address to contact you, in addition to an email address. The theory is that by providing consumers with an address and phone number they feel like they are dealing with a "real" business run by a "real" person.

I had never completely bought into this theory - I for one could care less if you have a phone number for me. As long as you have an email address that I can contact you at, I am happy. Ever try to contact Google? Good luck finding their phone number, they don't have phone support.

But I realized that for a number of reasons it might not be a bad idea to do this, even though I didn't completely agree with the logic behind it. After all, I don't represent the average consumer and it wouldn't cost that much anyway. So for next to nothing I got a P.O. Box and a pre-paid cell phone a few months back and voila - I had a Contact Us page that made SportsLizard.com look like a "real" business.

I figured no one would ever call - I mean why would anyone call when they could just fill out the contact form or send an email? Being 23, most of the people I know are around the same age as me and most of us would rather search for an hour for an email address or try to figure it out ourselves rather than pick up the phone and call. I just figured it was like that for everyone.

But a funny thing happened this week - the phone rang...a lot, and most of the time it was older adults (I am classifying an "older" adult as someone not in my generation, lets say 35+, which in reality isn't old at all). These people decided that they would rather call than use all of the other options that I give - contact form, email address, AIM. All of the questions that they asked were relatively simple and could have been answered by looking around SportsLizard.com for five minutes. So why would they call?

Once I thought about it, I realized that they probably chose to call me as opposed to searching around or sending an email for a few reasons. First, it does validate a business to call them and speak with someone who actually cares about you, rather than searching around the site for an answer, especially for those people from a generation that isn't used to using their computer to do everything.

The second reason that I could come up with was that most customer service email sucks. Most places send you an auto reply and then don't reply to you for a week (if at all). If they do reply, the reply is usually copied and pasted from an answer list and doesn't really answer your question. It looks like they didn't read what you wrote. I have had this happen to me several times and it is EXTREMELY frustrating.

All of this leads me to two conclusions - first, providing an email address and a snail mail address provides a level of comfort to some and is probably a good idea after all. Second, by simply answering your emails quickly (try to do it within a few hours if you can) and with a personal touch, you can differentiate yourself from the competition. And as a small business, you need every advantage that you can get.