We’ve all been there – languishing on hold to a call centre, suffering through a seemingly endless stream of hateful chart music. Y’know, if you spend five minutes on hold a month, that works out to like two and a half days over your lifetime. Two and a half days! How dare they take that time from you – time that could be spent doing something useful, like breeding termites, hiking across North Korea, or learning Esperanto.
With that in mind, these are some of our favourite tricks to beat the phone queue and claw that precious time back. Stick it to the man!
1) Don’t touch anything.
Automated call systems still have to account for the two people on the planet with an ancient rotary phone, so doing nothing will fool it into thinking you’ve got one and set you up with a real dude.
2) Swear.
Angry customers swear, and angry customers will leave companies. Some voice response systems will clock your naughty words and put you through to a human, typically a senior rep who’s more competent than most.
There’s nothing more that Obama loves than a good swear(ing-in)
3) The collections department.
Companies like money, and companies like their customers paying them money. Hence, if you connect to the collections department, you’ll likely bounce straight through to a human being.
4) Pretend to be a new customer.
Remember those days when you were a new customer and the company would pick up your calls straight away? Well, just fake that you’re a new customer, either by selection the right option, or with voice response systems screaming “new customer!”
5) Find some angry customers.
Can’t find a direct line to the person you need to speak to? There are likely armies of angry customers out there who’ve been through exactly what you’re going through, and typically have a solution. Do a Google search for the companies name plus “complaints” or “sucks” to find them.
Spot the clown
6) Get me the president!
One that’s worked for me – find a direct number or e-mail for the head of the company – typically they have a secretary monitoring their mailboxes/calls for complaints, which swiftly get patched through to the best call-centre monkeys and complaint handlers. Win!
7) The magic not-number zero.
With some systems, pressing zero will connect you to living, breathing human individual. Other combinations include 0#, #0, 0* or *0. Alternatively…
8) Pound the hash key.
Yup. Or…
9) Hit the star key.
Uh-huh.
10) The dreaded competitor
What scares voice response systems the most? When a customer utters the name of a competitor. So just say, like, “Megaconglomocorp Industries” and see what happens.
11) Go bilingual
Live in a country with a minority second language like Spanish or French or Na’vi? Try out a few words in that language – you might be patched through to a bilingual call rep, which usually means less waiting.
The Na’vi: get exceptional customer service.
12) Avoid peak times.
Like doing all your shopping on a Sunday evening – call centres have peak times. So don’t call during lunch, or on a Monday or Saturday. Thursday morning is pretty good, I reckon.
13) Don’t pay your bill.
That’s one way to get the company to call you.
So dear friends, any of these worked for you? Drop us a comment below.
