The ability to find information online, at your fingertips, is invaluable. Both professionally and personally. It’s hard to imagine life without it. Yet over the past couple of years, as we’ve set up our new food business, we have come to loathe two bits of information which are increasingly found online: Knowledge Bases and FAQs. Frequently Asked Questions. Or Frustrating And (very) Questionable as we now tend to call them!
We have spent hours trawling through lists of FAQs, trying to get answers to all sorts of simple, practical questions. You get sent from one list, to another, to another and then back to the start again. Still can’t find what you’re looking for? Round you go again – and no, you never find the answer. You just give up and take your custom elsewhere.
Without doubt, these lists have their place. We’ve included them on our website too – but we’ve also included alternative contact details so if you can’t find what you’re looking for, you can just ask us. After all, most of the time, that is all we want to do. We just want to speak to a human being and get a quick answer to a simple question. (It must be a human though. Things got so bad recently that the automated voice system at HMRC put the phone down on us!).
We really do wonder if these ‘culprit’ companies actually test their FAQ systems once they’re installed. Do they role-play the customer and try to find the answer to their question? Do they actually click on those links that just go round in circles? Or do they really think these automated systems offer an excellent level of customer service?
We don’t know the answers but we can’t face any more FAQs for the time being 🙂
Image by Arek Socha from PixabayÂ