Why customers were
calling the wrong number.

Context

Support was split across three lines, depending on the product and on how it had been bought. Customers had to work out which one was theirs.

The problem

A growing share of callers for one product line were reaching the wrong line. Each one meant a transfer, a wait, and a worse first contact. Asked where they'd found the number, they gave the same answer: Google.

What I found

The official contact page was correct, so the problem had to be between the page and the customer. I ran the searches customers actually type and found four different failures:

• A featured snippet showing another country's contact page.
• An AI answer giving only one of the two relevant numbers, citing a page that didn't contain it.
• An old post from a third party outranking the official site, with an outdated number.
• An AI answer suggesting contact routes that don't exist for that product.

Root cause: the page's structured data, the part search engines read, held a single global entry with one overseas contact. The local numbers existed only as visible text, and the emails were hidden by anti-spam scripts. With nothing reliable to read, Google and the AI answers fell back on global data, third parties, or guesses.

On top of that, the country redirect ran in the browser after the page had loaded, so search engines could still index the wrong regional version.

A second, unrelated cause: a “Contact us” link inside the product pointed to a section removed in a site update. People landed on a generic form that didn't list their product, filled it in anyway, and got routed to the wrong team.

What I proposed

• Make the page readable by machines: one structured contact entry per support line, each with its area, purpose and phone number in international format. Check the language and region tags.
• Route by what customers know: start by asking “Which product do you use?” instead of listing internal channel names. Customers know their product, not how support is organised.
• Fix the broken link in the next product release.

Outcome

A prioritised report delivered to the web and dev teams. The diagnosis was confirmed by a live call from a customer who had found the wrong number through search.

What I'd do differently

Ask “where did you find this number?” on every misrouted contact from day one. A count from the first week would have turned a pattern into a measurable problem much sooner.