Do 0870 numbers harm engagement?

Since getting back to the UK the prevalence of premium rate telephone numbers for not only technical support but also straight customer service has really shocked me.  Pretty well every company utilises an 0870, 0844, 0845 (et al) number for some part of their operation.

I can well understand the idea of using an easily remembered single number for the whole country (say 0845…) – it makes printing, advertising and such so much easier.  But I’m sure some marketing boffin at British Telecom decided sometime in the early naughties that offering up a method for monetising the contact with customers businesses live and die by was a better reason than that of making peoples lives easier.  It all seems to have gotten a little silly.

Does forcing the customer/user to pay for something as simple as obtaining a brochure or sign up for a service present an adoption barrier or harm engagement?

As I’ve been getting on with stuff this morning two examples laid themselves before me.

HM Customs and Revenue.  My step-father has spent over an hour on hold with various departments trying to sort out something or another.  The cost of that call was born solely by him.  Yup even the UK government utilises non-localised numbers for contact – they have a plethora of 0845s and even a few 0870s knocking around.

According to research by Which?, the Government’s Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency raised almost £2.5m from its 0870 numbers in 2006 and they were by no means the only agency raking in 7 figure revenues from premium calls!

Three UK.  Last week I was the lucky and grateful receiver of a free 3G broadband dongle from the operator.  It was part of a giveaway designed to drive adoption.  It came with no credit and limited instruction on installation or more to the point troubleshooting.  It simply did not work on my Windows 7 netbook – strange and curious errors abounded and all I was trying to do was connect to My3 (the customer portal) so I could obtain some credit.  The instructions, such as they were, had a free call number from my mobile for help but when I called it they thanked me for my custom and promptly handed over an 0870 number for support troubleshooting the installation.

Before I had even had the chance to spend money with 3UK they were demanding I paid for help with a product which patently didn’t work as advertised.  As it ended up the community came to the rescue as the resulting 25 minute call with 3UK support achieved nothing of use.

The slightly cynical side of me suspects that in a era of business where CRM is still deemed the right approach to talking to customers (rather than with) that many of those businesses using user-pays telephone contact are holding those customers on the phone waiting to bolster otherwise flagging revenues.  I’d love to hear from anyone with call centre inside knowledge – either way.

Having had a quick look around the web it appears that Ofcom are already launching an investigation into 0870 numbers later in 2009

In the meantime make use of SayNoTo0870.Com and find yourself the most appropriate number for your use.