Website explains how to talk to a live person at top companies

Recently I needed to talk to a customer no service representative at a particular company, but none of the menu options on the phone would let me connect with a human. So I’m shouting in the phone “Representative…Operator…Customer service!” because it was one of those deals where you could either press a button or issue voice commands. But nothing worked and eventually I got disconnected!

GetHuman.com is a neat website I’ve discussed before that tells you how to reach a live person at a variety of top companies. Not every company is listed at GetHuman, nor does every company even have an option where you can talk to a person.

But for those that do, GetHuman has become much more sophisticated over time. The site now tells you the average wait time you can expect, and it offers detailed instructions that tell you exactly which prompts or numbers to push when you’re on the phone. There are even user ratings for the customer no service departments of all companies listed.

I used GetHuman and was able to figure out how to talk to a person, but they weren’t of much help when I did get them on the line!

Regardless, this whole thing raises a larger issue in my mind: Why is it that companies seem to want to infuriate us by making it hard to get in touch with them? It’s not like we call them for no reason; we only call when we have a question or a problem.  

The funny thing is that it costs companies big bucks to acquire new customers vs. keeping their existing customers, as much as by a factor of 10. So what are they thinking?!

Note: This segment originally aired February 2011