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Opinion: It Should Be Possible to Call Restaurants and Cafes
🇸🇪 Sweden /Culture & Society

Opinion: It Should Be Possible to Call Restaurants and Cafes

From Dagens Nyheter · (6m ago) Swedish Critical tone

Translated from Swedish, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

TLDR

  • A Swedish resident laments the difficulty of contacting cafes and restaurants by phone, noting that many only provide email addresses.
  • The lack of accessible phone numbers leads to frustration and inconvenience, particularly when trying to retrieve lost items or inquire about daily specials.
  • The author suggests that businesses may be prioritizing in-person sales over customer communication, a trend they find disappointing compared to the past.

In today's increasingly digital world, a growing number of Swedish establishments, particularly cafes, seem to be shunning a fundamental aspect of customer service: the telephone. As Lars Thorén writes in this opinion piece for Dagens Nyheter, the inability to reach businesses by phone is not just a minor inconvenience; it's a frustrating barrier that disconnects businesses from their patrons. Many cafes and restaurants, he observes, have opted to list only email addresses, often resulting in multi-day delays for responses, if any are received at all.

Nowadays in this digital society, there are many cafes and restaurants that cannot be reached by phone, especially cafes.

— Lars ThorénDescribing the prevalence of inaccessible phone numbers for businesses.

Thorén recounts personal experiences that highlight the absurdity of this trend. Forgetting a phone charger at a cafe, he found the listed number defunct. After a fruitless call to directory assistance, he had to physically return to the cafe the next day to retrieve his item. Similarly, losing a snuffbox at another establishment presented the same challenge: no working phone number, only an internal email address useless to the customer. Even simple inquiries, like asking about the daily soup special at his local cafe, are impossible without a phone number.

Many have email addresses, but then it can take several days before you get a response.

— Lars ThorénHighlighting the delay and uncertainty associated with email communication.

This deliberate lack of accessibility, Thorén argues, suggests a troubling shift in business philosophy. It appears many establishments are prioritizing direct sales over any form of customer engagement outside of a physical visit. This move away from readily available phone contact, he contends, represents a step backward, a loss of a simpler, more customer-friendly era. The piece serves as a call to action for businesses to reconsider their communication strategies and re-establish basic accessibility for their customers.

It seems that many establishments do not want any contact with customers except on-site so that they can make sales.

— Lars ThorénSpeculating on the reasons behind businesses' reluctance to provide phone contact.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by Dagens Nyheter in Swedish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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