Call 1-800-THIS-IS-THE-21ST-CENTURY

May 9, 2009 digital 24 Comments

The days of asking people to dial a phone number by associating letters in your nifty, branded phone number (I’m looking at you, Key Bank and Compass Bank) to digits on my telephone keypad are over. Why? I have a Blackberry Curve. Here’s my keypad:

curve-keyboard

My wife has the Blackberry Pearl. Here’s her keyboard:

pearl-keyboard

Uhhhhhh ….

Asking me to dial 1-800-KEY2YOU or 1-800-COMPASS without giving me the actual digits basically shows your entire marketing team thinks this is the 1950s, and all telephone handsets look and behave exactly alike.

In our home, we only have cell phones. The only POTS phones we own are packed in a box in the garage. I could look up an old-fashioned telephone keypad with a Google image search, but … seriously? And what if I’m in my car? Pull over and find a pay telephone so that I can figure out what number to dial? Ridiculous.

Wake up, suits!