Davis Freeberg’s Site Of The Week
July 24th, 2007 Davis Posted in Site Of The Week, Technology, Search |
If you’ve ever tried to contact a business for technical or customer support, then you know exactly how frustrating it can be, when you are trying to get a hold of a live agent. Sometimes, the automated phone systems may have the info. that you need, but 9 times out of 10, I’ve found that it’s easier to ask someone a direct question, than to navigate through a maze of options.
One trick that I learned to use, a long time ago, is to immediately hit *0 and sometimes it will take me to a live operator. Other times, it will disconnect my call and send me back to zero, so I always try this early on in the call and phone back, if I need to.
Mashing buttons into my phone, in order to get to the right department for a company, is a little annoying, but not as bad as the voice activated systems. Half the time, they can’t understand me and if you don’t use their keywords exactly, it’s easy to get reset back to the beginning of the menu. The other half of the time, the system will understand me just fine, but I don’t want to share my password and the last four digits of my social security number with other people in my vicinity.
As technology continues its march forward, this has been one area where consumers have been forced to take a step back. Luckily, this week’s winner of the site of the week can help consumers take back control over phone queue hell.
NoPhoneTrees.com is a website that is devoted to tracking telephone numbers of live people at various companies. I’m not sure the total count, but they have contact information on everything from the California DMV to the Xbox customer support line.
In order to test the site, I decided to use it for a few companies that I’m a customer at. While I was able to get a hold of live agents who could assist me, a few of the times, I ended up in the wrong department. While it’s nice to have a hot line directly into a company like Schwab, it doesn’t really help me all that much, if my account information isn’t available to the person I’m calling.
With a little bit of research, I could probably track down the numbers directly, but having so many in one localized place makes it more convenient to go back to on a regular basis. Congratulations to No Phone Trees for making consumer’s lives easier and on winning this week’s contest. If you’d like to nominate a web page for site of the week, feel free to send me an email. The nominations for next week’s contest are listed below, please vote in the sidebar.
July 25th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
I was going to defend those voice recognition software packages. They frustrate me much less than humans. But then, I remembered they just transfer me to a human, and I have to repeat everything I told the automated system. You just can’t win.
July 25th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
The voice recognition systems are not as bad as I make them out, but I still hate not getting right to a human. Part of my problem is I start trying to guess their keywords and end up screaming operator or attendant again and again on my telephone.
July 25th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
I thought they had an agitation feature.
I was sure I’d read somewhere if you started using certain phrases or your voice got agitated - you got bumped to a human more quickly. Now that I think about it.. perhaps that was an urban legend. Or wishful thinking. You pick.
Did you read MS was going to launch a newer cheaper PS3?
You know - I only mention it because I’m the underdog. And it’s sort of fun.
Truthfully.. I don’t even keep track of this stuff.. Mr S. reads the fan-boy sites for obvious reasons. I don’t want you to think I’m obsessively watching.