Web Reviews

Get a Human on the Phone

Indianapolis, IN - March 20, 2006

“'Please state your password,' the system asks. 'Big boy,' he responds, sitting on a commuter train next to an older, somewhat surprised passenger.”

- CitiBank TV Commercial

I've been conducting a little non-scientific market research recently and I'm willing to share my results with all of you, right now, for free. Business owners, IT people, and customer service managers should pay particular attention: Nobody likes automated answering systems, or interactive voice response (IVR), as they're often called. IVR is the telephony technology that you deal with when you call a company and get a recording that says something like, "please say your name" or "please say your account number." Everyone involved in my poll hated these things. Now, before you begin disagreeing with me, consider the evidence.

First of all, I've asked a lot of people – at least ten – and they all rank automated telephone systems even below research polls and the subsequent articles based on "polling data." In fact, I've found that most people are like me, and there are few things I dislike more than automated phone systems. Anyone who's ever been through the hell of "Press 9 to repeat this menu" feels immediate camaraderie with the poor sap on the new CitiBank commercials: "Please state your password," the system asks. "Big boy," he responds, sitting on a commuter train next to an older, somewhat surprised passenger.

Paul English, co-founder of travel search engine Kayak.com (about which I recently wrote a web review), apparently counts himself among those who feel the same. In his case, however, he's had enough bad experiences with phone systems to do something about it, so English set out to change the face of customer service.

On his personal blog, English began posting 800-number shortcuts for more than 200 companies. These shortcuts allowed people to entirely skip the automated prompts to get a living, breathing person on the other end. What happened? Well, the site, which wasn't advertised and spread only via word-of-mouth, was a little overwhelmed. So overwhelmed, in fact, that English discovered two things: One, his efforts to change customer service had struck a nerve with consumers and discovering new shortcuts was a job too large for one person.

As a result, his personal blogging effort has now become its own movement, housed at a site called gethuman. The site still focuses on secret number codes and phone numbers that will allow you to slice through those annoying IVR systems to get straight to a (very possibly incompetent) human being. And because of that incompetent thing, they're also using the site as a rating system for customer service calls and plan to publish a list of the best and worst mass-market consumer companies in the world. Additionally, volunteers across the country now contribute shortcuts of their own and the database is expanding rapidly.

Next time you need to call Dell, AAA, Visa, Fifth Third, or any one of more than 400 other companies and you prefer a human to a computer, make a quick stop at gethuman first. Just a few seconds could save a lot of time on the phone and help keep your blood pressure in check.