Why We Removed Our Phone Number (and What Happened Next)

Why we did it

IBC orders involve a lot of specs — quantity, grade, freight destination, contents history. Capturing those over the phone meant repeating the conversation when the buyer's purchasing team had questions a day later. Email and form-based inquiries put the spec on paper from the start.

What changed

• First-reply time dropped from ~3 hours to ~45 minutes. Email is asynchronous; phones interrupt.
• Quote accuracy improved — written specs do not get garbled.
• Internal handoffs (sales to operations to logistics) sped up because everything was already in writing.
• Customer satisfaction (we survey) actually rose, even though the change was initially controversial.

What we lost

A small number of buyers who genuinely wanted to talk to a human in real-time bounced. Most of those buyers came back. A few did not. We are at peace with the trade-off.

What we would do differently

We probably should have explained the rationale on the contact page from day one, instead of just removing the number and waiting for confused emails. Hence this post — written eight months too late.