automated phone systems

Ever wonder whether some of America's biggest companies are run by fools and jerks? Of course not -- you KNOW they are every time you call to get info or to solve a problem and find yourself in phone hell. Short-sighted companies do this to cut costs, even though some highly successful companies such as Nordstrom, Land's End, L.L. Bean and Southwest Airlines make a point of having live people answer the phone quickly.

Now a disgruntled techie helps you to beat the system. Go to:

http://www.paulenglish.com/ivr/

where you'll find out how you can talk to a human being at a giant corporation. The site has cheats for the phone systems of about a hundred large companies with more on the way. In addition to specific company cheats there is good general advice on dealing with phone systems.

Spread the word! (But don't tell the systems people where you work.)

Wow - thank you SO MUCH for sharing this! I've found some on the list that are going to be really helpful!

~ J.

That would be most helpful to many people. Who hasn't at one time or another called a company and had one of those dreadful phone systems take up so much time for a simple question.

Every morning, I listen to KFI-AM640 - Los Angeles where Paul English appears several times a year. He is an interesting character who assembles his list as a hobby, not as a business.

As I get older, I am finding it easier to migrate to vendors who provide good service. For example, I can generally call Southwest Airlines and get an answer within **TWO** minutes or I can spend an HOUR on the phone with United Airlines. Therefore, even though Midway is 20 miles FURTHER from the house, I use Southwest.

If I have to spend more than a couple seconds getting to a person OR if the individual is nasty, I terminate the vendor. In every industry, there is generally someone that values customer service (and generally, they are not more expensive, either).

jlawrence01 wrote:As I get older, I am finding it easier to migrate to vendors who provide good service. For example, I can generally call Southwest Airlines and get an answer within **TWO** minutes or I can spend an HOUR on the phone with United Airlines. Therefore, even though Midway is 20 miles FURTHER from the house, I use Southwest.

Customer service is more and more important to me as I get older. I do find that if I am a reasonable customer I get better service too.

Re: being a reasonable customer, I recently sent my iPod back to HP for service. I was told initially it would only take 4-5 days for them to turn it around and send it back. I got an email giveing me an estimated ship date 8 weeks out! I called in and spoke to the CS rep. I was very calm and worked hard to get her on my side by being pleasant and using language that implied we both wanted to work together. I thanked her and hung up.

The iPod arrived at my house three days later.

Much better than ranting and raving:)

I simply refuse to play the automated phone system game and never enter any touchtone codes - leading me to a real human. Granted, some sytems treat the luddite non-touchtone phone people as scum and cast them out to the try-again-buddy queue but they are the minority. Most systems will queue you into the real human phone support system. Whether or not those people will actually help you is another topic.