From Cheat Sheet To Industry Standard
GetHuman Coaches Callers On How To Play The Game
As reported in a previous Urban Skills post, Urban Skills: Get By Automated Call Center Menus, the Gethuman web site, provides a database of phone tree bypasses, listed by company, to reach human representatives at call centers, which is a pretty cool alternative to feeling like this:
GetHuman Changes The Game
Even cooler, however, is Gethuman making its own database superfluous.
According to a Wall Street Journal article, Stuck in a Phone Tree: Some Companies Try To Make Escape Easier,1
[GetHuman has] initiated a campaign that encourages companies to ease the aggravation of using their so-called phone trees. Companies agreeing to follow the “GetHuman Standard” guidelines — which include allowing callers to press “0″ or say “operator” to reach a live person, and to press “#” or say “repeat” to replay a menu — will play a special tone, or “earcon,” at the beginning of the call, signaling to consumers that the company is in compliance.
Lending credence to this effort,, GetHuman has won the agreement of two large automated-phone-system suppliers, Nuance Communications and an up and coming outfit called Microsoft, to support and recommend the service to their clients. The WSJ article goes on to discuss the experiences, issues, and new technology pertinent to improving customer experience with automated phone systems (AKA Satan’s Party Line).
In any case, this campaign would seem to increase the odds of callers feeling like this:
Footnotes
- If there are problems accessing the WSJ article through the link in the above posting, try alternative WSJ Phone Tree Article Site. GetHuman also has information on this campaign posted at GetHuman Earcon Standard ~back~
