Nic Chan comes out as the whistleblower on how many “Contact Us” pages are made (spoiler: they’re designed to keep us from contacting anyone).
A “fuck off contact page” is what a company throws together when they actually don’t want anyone to contact them at all. They […] are trying to reduce the amount of money they spend on support by carefully hiding the real support channels […] If you solve your own problem by reading the knowledge base, then this is a win for the company. They don’t want to hear from you, they want you to fuck off.
It’s true. This is how the proverbial sausage is made. I’ve been there. I’ve seen these decisions handed down. Which means, like Chan, I know how to read between the lines of most “Contact Us” pages on the internet.
I’m not sure about you, but as a user, when I see [these kinds of pages], knowing that whatever my original query was, [I know] I’m going to have to solve it unassisted.
My process follows this arc:
- I have a question.
- Go to the company’s “Contact Us” page.
- Immediately intuit from the design of the page whether I’m actually going to be able to contact someone and get help, or if I’m on my own.
A direct line to a human is the ultimate luxury in today’s world.
The project finished on time, everyone got paid, and the client was happy with the end result, but I still felt very disappointed in the whole thing.
So it goes.
There’s a scene from The Matrix that kept echoing in my head while reading Chan’s post.
There are contact pages, my friends. Endless “Contact Us” pages.
Where human beings no longer exist.
For a long time I probably wouldn’t have believed it, and then I saw the pages made with my own eyes. Watched them remove the ability for human beings to contact one another.
And standing there, facing the pure, automated precision of it all, I came to realize the obviousness of the truth.
What is the “Contact Us” page?
Cost savings.
The “Contact Us” page is a computer-generated dream world, built to keep us from contacting another human in order to save cost and turn a human being into this: a source of revenue.