Quick Tips On How to Get Human Help Over the Phone
posted 8:18 am Thu February 07, 2008 - Washington
Here's hoping that you never come to that. But if hearing things like, "please select from the following six options," makes your cringe then ABC 7/NewsChannel 8 is on your side with tip to help you get past the automation and get to the human. "(The automated phone systems) are setup to save money as a cost saving device, they are not set up for ease of use or even to help customers in many cases," explained Voice Automation Analyst Walter Rolandi.
Fairfax resident Albert Martin had to wait two hours to get an actual human after trying to solve an issue with the web-service PayPal.
"I went back and forth with the automated system and being put on hold, and after two hours still no help," Martin said. Using a tip from the website GetHuman.Com, ABC 7/NewsChannel 8 was able to get someone on the phone in about a minute by pressing zero after each prompt.
GetHuman.Com lists similar insider secrets for about 500 major companies including Verizon and Travelocity.Com.
Hold times can very greatly for an operator, but another insider secret is to try hitting zero or pound several times on a touchtone phone.
Besides the hundreds of insider secrets listed in the gethuman 500 database (www.gethuman.com), our expert Walter Rolandi also recommends:
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.
- 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.
When you do finally find a human, ask them how to connect directly the next time (in case your call gets disconnnected etc), and be sure to tell us so we can then list their number here. :-).
Additional links (provided by gethuman.com):
Site listing numbers for Paypal: http://www.paypalsucks.com/PayPalPhoneNumbers.shtml
Site listing numbers for Amazon: http://amazoncustomerservice.blogspot.com/2007/12/8.html
Site listing numbers for eBay: http://www.ebayphonenumber.net/
Other Ideas:
Search the website name for a number at:
Search government filings for publically traded companies. The documents should contain a phone number.
Finally, you can always try 411.
Other listings of phone tree secrets can be found at
Latest Comment on Quick Tips On How to Get Human Help Over the Phone
Jaque
6:44 am on 02/12/08
I once had a problem with a mail order catalog company. I could not get past the automated phone system. I checked the catalog and called the company that published the catalog (often not the same as the company selling things in the catalog) then asked for a got a point of contact at the parent company. I got the catalog sales office and a transfer to the presidents phone.
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