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Get through to a human

gethuman.com

46 pointsDTrejo13 comments

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Here are some general good tips:

1) Repeatedly press 0

2) and #

3) and *

4) Repeatedly say "agent"

5) and "operator"

6) and your favorite mainstream swear word

7) Respond to a voice prompt with loud baby noises

Most systems are programmed to put you through to an operator if you demand one, indicate your frustration by swearing, or when presented with an accent that the software can't interpret (hence the baby noises).

> 6) and your favorite mainstream swear word

That's one of my favourite "how to get to a human on the phone" myths. It's the same as no.7 really, or just being silent: unrecognised answer == human needed. Even a reliable recognition of digits/numbers is hard enough - noone sane will waste time to put some swearword profiles on the system... If they did, they'd probably make sure you get back to the menus instead - call center people are either allowed to disconnect you if you're being agressive, or they're so used to that, they don't care anymore ;)

Even though Mitel seems to have a patent for such system http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6411687/description.html I could never find a product which implements that option. It wouldn't be cheap either. I don't think it exists... if anyone can prove me wrong, please do :)

Even if it is the same as #7, it is just so much more satisfying :-)

Just about all IVR's are coded with a counter for the number of "no inputs" (silences) or "no matches" (whatever you said did not match any of the expected inputs above a configured confidence threshold). So as pointed out above, 6 and 7 are identical, as is plain silence.

Accent detection would actually be pretty hard and beyond the scope of the speech engines used in most of these applications.

I used to work an automated call center and 'credit request' was most (service providers) customer's golden ticket to a live agent, but whenever the requested a 'live agent' they'd just get recycled back into the system.

Is a similar thing available for other countries?

What I have found more useful is the gethuman.com iPhone app (free): http://www.gethuman.com/iphone/

Since usually when I need a site like this I'm on the go!

I've found that saying nothing allowed me to not only get to a live agent eventually, but skip the queue as well. I guess they assumed I didn't speak english, because the agent initially spoke to me in Spanish. I've used gethuman as well, but never managed to skip the queue with it. (I'm not sure how I feel ethically about virtual line-cutting, but the hacker in me likes finding ways to do so.)

I have found that repeatedly hitting # will cause most phone trees to direct you to a human pretty quickly.

I might try that sometime. I've been on at least one phone system where pressing 0 repeatedly will cause it to hang up on you.

Comcast

Amazing. This is one of those 'where was this when I needed it!?' sites.

Really, this seems like something companies should take note of. Is it really the best business decision to make it as hard as possible to get customer service?

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