Okay this post addresses  a bit of a personal pet peeve.  But, there is nothing I can’t stand more than a company I buy from not having a telephone number I can reach a person on.  Especially when I have a problem.  Or they have a telephone number but you have to research the internet for 30 minutes to find it.  This activity of having only an email address to handle customer issues is off putting and I don’t believe it is good for business.
Using emails as the only interaction with your end customers creates a wall that separates you from your them.  It prevents you from benefiting from the opportunity to deliver an outstanding customer experience.  Outstanding customer experiences is what you should be trying to achieve.  When you delight your customer you not only create a loyal customer but you also gain customers from the friends they talk to about the experience.
“Branding Through Customer Service Over the years, the number one driver of our growth at Zappos has been repeat customers and word of mouth. Our philosophy has been to take most of the money we would have spent on paid advertising and invest it into customer service and the customer experience instead, letting our customers do the marketing for us through word of mouth.”
― Tony Hsieh, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
Recently I was at Chase Bank making a cash deposit.  I was at the teller drive up and was told no less than 3 times I could make the deposit at the ATM machine.  I did not want to and explained why to the teller.  She told me that Chase wants their staff to encourage people to use the machine.  Wow, what a way to make the banking experience even more impersonal.  It makes me wonder what the management is thinking when they are telling their customers they don’t want to interact with them.
So the moral of this post is:  Have a live persona who is knowledgeable, friendly, and empowered to find solutions handle all your customer service and watch your business grow.