I was shocked the first time I came across a major commercial Web site without a telephone number. While doing research for a product review, I was browsing Microsoft's small-business Web site and wanted to call a contact person. No such animal, at least based on a search of the site. In fact, not one phone number to anybody or anything did I find, not even a corporate number. I found lots of links to e-mail contacts and links floating off into other divisions of Microsoft, but not a name or phone number to be seen. Have you ever tried to call an unnamed individual working somewhere under the Microsoft umbrella? Don't bother.

Of course I could use e-mail, but in this case time was short and I wanted the confirmation that comes from talking to somebody. I know about e-mails to anonymous people in departments scattered around the country. It can take days for a response. So I often try to call (when I can get a likely number). That's when I hit the phone-message menus.

Touch-tone purgatory

A few days ago I had reason to contact the IRS (shudder). The first message I heard had two options: "Press 1 to use our automated IRS information services. Press 2 if you do not have a Touch-Tone phone." I pressed 1. "We apologize but all our lines are busy; please call back later in the day." After three tries, my wife offered a wise suggestion: "Try the 'Do not have a Touch-Tone phone' option." I did and immediately got another menu. Remember, this is for people with rotary phones who can't do menus. I not only got a menu, but it worked--and within three press-somethings, I reached a person.

Everybody has their own stories: messages consisting of nine or 10 options, taking five minutes to hear them all; options that go in circles; lists of options that don't have what you want, and when you try the catchall option at the end, it puts you on hold for a half hour; wrong options that leave you no choice but to redial and start over.

Of course, the Catch-22 is that all the irate and disgruntled customers don't have an opportunity to register their complaints, unless the complaint desk is on a phone menu too. Consequently, the company management has no idea that 8 percent of its potential business has just hung up in disgust and may well be telling friends about the lousy experience.

People count even if you can't count on people

Several months ago, I did a column about a receptionist whose value to her company was so invaluable that they tried to build a computer system around her. She didn't need it. Her specialty was treating each and every customer as an individual--with a personality, history, and objectives that she (and by extension, her company) would honor. She did this with intelligence, concern, and a smile--qualities I've seldom experienced in a phone menu or an e-mail form.

There are plenty of things we do on the Internet or the phone where personal contact isn't needed or even desired. Making small and simple purchases, gathering bits of information, and similar activities work just fine without human intervention. That doesn't mean human intervention is never required. The bigger the transaction, the more complicated the information or situation, the more likely an appropriately knowledgeable human being can be helpful or even necessary.

The most obvious case is customer support--the handling of problems encountered in the normal (and not-so-normal) operation of business. This has been an element of concern and difficulty for businesses since day one. How do you keep your customers satisfied without losing money doing it? A lot of people-related decisions are made throughout a customer-support operation. It's a wonder customer support often becomes so impersonal.

I think most business people (and probably the general public) know that real business is a "who you know" business. Most significant transactions are grounded in personal contacts, and often personal relationships. As the transactions become less significant, it's likely that personal contact will diminish in importance; the trick is to know where the boundary lies between ensuring personal contact with customers and creating efficiencies for the sake of cost control. Put another way, at what point in business relations with a customer does a real person--with a name--become important?

When you try to contact a company for technical or purchasing help, have you ever wondered why you don't see a list of support people by name? Some possible reasons are that the company is concerned about the support function, not support people; employees come and go, and the company doesn't want to do the maintenance on the names; or, the company has two support employees (working alternate shifts) for 50,000 customers, and doesn't want to reveal it.

What's depressing about this is the utter brainlessness. In most cases, the reason phone menus, e-mail, support services, and other devices for handling public contact don't work is that somebody in the organization is too lazy (or incompetent) to figure out and implement a good approach. Between fears of cost, avoidance of work, and general lack of concern for people (staff or customer), these atrocious systems are allowed to persist. I often think that if the folks who ordered or supervised these systems ever actually used them, things would be different. But I've heard employees of large phone companies say to customers: "Don't bother to use our customer-service lines; most of the options don't work." You'd think that at the phone companies, phone menus would be an art form.

Deeper issues

I think even such small issues as phone menus and contact names are representative of how we are going to respond to technology. Some Big Issues are involved: technology as a way to be more efficient and save money versus a tendency to depersonalize and lose sight of the reason for using the technology in the first place.

In some cases, there is a natural dynamic to help create a balance. Companies that can't develop a good support service, or who have terrible phone systems, will probably be bad at a lot of things and will consequently fail. In highly competitive situations (such as the Internet), the support issues themselves will often be the difference between success and failure. On the other hand, I know a number of companies see the ill will their lack of support service generates as part of their cost of doing business. It's like saying, "Oh well, 10 percent of the whiners are cranks. Who needs 'em?" In a sense, they try to quantify savings in support costs versus losses in customers.

The point is that some organizations (or people) will treat such things as customer service as a purely business issue, and others will see it from a more fuzzy and humanistic angle. Therein lay some of the deeper philosophical issues set into a very old framework of argument that first came into prominence 200 years ago as we entered the industrial age: technology versus man. Personally, I think this framework is interesting, but largely bogus. Technology is far too complex to be reduced to "us against it."

Back to the nitty-gritty. Here's a simple rule of thumb: If you're not getting an irresistible bargain, don't do business with a company that can't provide you with a contact (preferably somebody with a name). A more positive approach, though it requires some effort: Send a thank-you in writing (e-mail or post) to companies and employees who treat you like an individual. I know, who has time for this sort of thing? That's exactly how depersonalization gets started.

Editor at Large Nelson King is ComputerUser's leading industry analyst.