By
Leslie O'Flahavan
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Date Published: April 15, 2025 - Last Updated April 14, 2025
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Comments
Your company’s “Contact Us” page is the most utilitarian, least sexy page at your website. It has one job: helping people who need to contact you understand how to do it. But your Contact Us page likely contains flaws that confuse people or make them angry. These flaws are increasing calls, emails and texts to your Customer Service team.
Granted, some customers don’t use your Contact Us page to figure out how to reach you. They contact you through your app or behind a login. But the less experience people have with your company (think prospects, not customers) the more likely they are to use your Contact Us page. If you want to make a great impression on people who are thinking of buying from you, fix that Contact Us page.
Here are five common problems with Contact Us pages. You may have to partner with the web team, digital team or the Marketing Team to get the fixes your Contact Us page needs, but the effort is worth it.
1. Omitting an email address and phone number.
The National Park Service’s Contact Us page does not include an email address or a phone number. Anywhere. I’ve looked. One reason for this choice might be that NPS headquarters wants to avoid being asked questions that only a specific park’s staff can answer. But omitting any email address or phone number suggests that NPS believes no person ever could have a question for them. That’s just not correct.
2. Using insider’s language instead of “email us.”
Safeway’s Contact Us page invites people to “Submit a request form…” instead of inviting them to “email us...” This wording causes two problems. First, no customer ever said, “I’ve got a problem with Safeway, so I’m going to submit a request form.” “Request form” is what Safeway calls it; customers call it “send an email” or “complete the online form.” Second, their wording implies that the only reason they think a customer would contact them this way is to ask a delivery or pickup question. But what if a customer has a question or a complaint? What do I do with “Your store in Cloverly, Maryland is really dirty!”? Submit a “clean your store” request form?
3. Being overly complicated about when you’re available.
TechSmith’s Contact Us page explains that they are available by phone from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Thursday, but asks customers to “… please note that MI participates in Daylight Saving Time (EDT) from mid-March to November.” Factually, this information is true. Practically, it’s hard to know what TechSmith wants me to do with it. Are they not answering phones between 9 and 5 when they’re on Eastern Daylight Time? I’m confused. And who amongst us “participates” in Daylight Saving Time? Makes it sound like a choice.
4. Using jargon most customers don’t use or understand.
Septa is the mass transit system for the Philadelphia area, and their Contact Us page lets customers know “Our multilingual line can help you in more than 200 languages.” This is wonderful and truly customer-centric. But then, they toss in the acronym “LEP” when they explain “We help LEP (Limited English Proficient) callers with an interpreter…” Customers whose English proficiency is limited don’t refer to themselves as “LEP customers.” The jargon makes this page harder to read for the people it’s trying to help.
5. Not offering a response time for email.
When customers submit the form at Major League Baseball’s Contact Us page, they have no idea how long they’ll wait for a response. While this practice is common, it’s not a good idea. How can we expect customers to wait for a response when they have no idea how long we want them to wait? In contrast, the Washington Post’s Contact Us page explains that when you send them an email, “you’ll hear back in about 24 hours.” Yes, the word “about” is doing a lot of work there, but the timeframe is helpful and necessary.
Discovering your Contact Us page is hurting your Customer Service operation is like discovering that toothpaste is giving you cavities. But in the contact center world where so many problems are un-fixable, your Contact Us page is fixable. You can improve it. And you can stop it from doing harm.