I don't know about you, but sometimes I could just break down and cry when I am on the phone, just trying to ask a simple question of a real live human being and instead I am asked a zillion questions by some overly-perky robotic recording on caffeine who just can't seem to understand me and I KNOW 
I am speaking in plain ENGLISH.
photo courtesy of carlav.blog.com/
Today I was working with a client and I almost starting sobbing after 20 minutes of shouting all kinds of special trigger words that I hoped would get me a human being.
Well, while I was sitting there waiting, I started Googling around and found this great website called the Get Human 500 Database at GetHuman.com.
Aside from having the individual secret ways and means to get straight to a live operator for over 500 major companies such as Bank of America, Avis, Bust Buy, Orbitz, Verizon, Walmart, Fedex, etc. here are some generic tips offered on the site:
getting to a human
Once you have a phone number, here are some tips to try to get through the computer to get to a live human:
- Interrupt. Press 0 (or 0# or #0 or 0* or *0) repeatedly, sometimes quickly. Unfortunately the same keystroke does not always work for each company. Many IVRs will connect to a human after a few "invalid entries", although some IVRs will hangup. :-(
- Talk. Say "get human" (or "agent" or "representative") or raise your voice, or just mumble. :) The IVR might connect you to a human after one of these key or unknown phrases.
- Just hold, pretending you have only an old rotary phone.
- Connect to account collections or sales or account cancellation; they always seem to answer quickly. First ask them for their name and rep number (so they know you are writing it down, and thus so they are more likely to help you.) Then ask them to transfer you to the department you need. Sometimes they will put you ahead of the queue, although sometimes they will send you to the end (and thus in those cases this tip is useless).
- Toll call. For credit cards, if the expected wait time is too long, hangup
and try to call back on their non-toll-free number, as they often have shorter queues.
- Selecting the option for Spanish will sometimes get you a bilingual human more quickly than if you just waited for an English-only operator.
photo courtesy of LondonClassWar.org
When you do finally find a human, ask them how to connect directly the next time (in case your call gets disconnected etc), and be sure to tell us so we can then list their number here. :-).
So next time you are on hold in front of your computer, check it out and let me know how it worked out!
¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´ ..·´ Jessica -:¦:-
