Ever feel like you need to schedule a whole day to deal with a simple problem? Who, or what, is the problem?
Modern voicemail 'customer service' call centers are supposed to make life easier but have become endless push
button options, hold times and representatives that don't listen, don't understand and make you repeat your
problem over and over. Paul English was a victim who decided to do something about it and his 'cheat sheet'
detailing how to get through to a LIVE person right away has caught fire...

The IVR Cheat Sheet / Get Human.com

Visit the IVR Cheat Sheet and learn how to access over 200 companies in these Categories: finance government
insurance pharmacy products retail shipping technology telco travel tv/satellite, rate companies you've dealt with and find companies that have received kudo's for great customer support.

Get involved and report your experiences to Paul's Blog - it's easy - will make your life easier - and it's FREE!

PAUL'S STORY

Paul English created his list because he got tired of dealing with automated systems and wanted to get a human voice.

Sick of automation? Dial 0 for human
By Bruce Mohl, Boston Globe

The frustration is all too familiar: Call a company's customer service line, and chances are you'll have a hard time reaching a human.

Paul English of Arlington got tired of dealing with computerized voice systems and decided there was only way around it: He would put together a cheat sheet. It started small, with the 10 companies that frustrated him the most.

But the list started growing after the 42-year-old software engineer posted it on his website earlier this year and invited readers to make their own contributions. He now has tips for quickly reaching an actual person at 108 companies.

Want a Visa representative? Press 0 several times, ignoring the automated voice telling you that it's an invalid entry. How about a Delta Air Lines human? Say ''agent" twice. At Sprint/Nextel, press 0 five times.

''I hope companies eventually respond with 'Oh my God, I didn't realize how painful we made it for people,' " English said. ''I hope it's a wake-up call."

Don't count on it. The widespread proliferation of automated customer service systems is part of a profound change in the way American businesses deal with customers. A lot of attention has been focused on how consumers end up speaking to call centers in India or other countries when they phone for help. But Gartner Inc., a market research firm in San Francisco, said many companies are bypassing call centers altogether by asking their customers to serve themselves with the help of technology.

Self-service activities range from customers scanning and bagging their own groceries to consumers using automated voice systems or websites to purchase tickets, submit insurance claims, manage bank accounts, or adjust financial portfolios. By 2010, Gartner says, self-service will account for 58 percent of all service interactions, up from 35 percent today.

The reason is cost. Richard Shapiro, president of the Center for Client Retention in Springfield, N.J., estimates an automated customer service system can handle a query at a cost of 8 to 15 cents a minute. The same query handled by a customer service representative in India or the Philippines would cost 20 to 40 cents a minute, and 65 cents to $1 a minute if handled by a US agent.

Cost is not the only advantage that automated systems enjoy. They often improve customer service by delivering information quickly and around the clock. They can also reduce wait times for human customer service agents and let those agents focus on more difficult problems.

Yet many consumers, particularly older ones, don't like talking to computers. Shapiro estimates that 40 percent of the people who call a company's toll-free number immediately dial 0 looking for a live person.

Many companies have responded by taking away the option to dial 0 and making it harder to reach a human.

Last year, some airlines started charging customers $5 per ticket for making reservations by phone.

Sovereign Bank, one of the companies on English's cheat sheet, said it doesn't make sense for the bank to offer the option of dialing 0. Bank officials say it's more efficient to have customers input their own personal data rather than have an agent take it down.

''That costs too much money," said Jim White, senior vice president at the bank. ''In our business, seconds count."

White said 85 percent of the 25 million people who call Sovereign each year never talk to a human. He said that percentage should rise slightly next year as the company adopts a more flexible speech-recognition system.

Southwest Airlines has a different philosophy. It doesn't want any barrier between its employees and customers, so it routes all calls directly to customer service agents.

Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the Center for e-Business at MIT's Sloan School of Management, said automated systems offer a lot of benefits, but companies should keep the focus on their customers, not on cost savings.

Mac Cummings, chief executive officer of Terakeet Corp., a firm in Syracuse, N.Y., that develops customer response systems, said companies get into trouble when they ask the systems to do too much or don't spend enough money installing them.

Cummings said consumers get annoyed when they get put on hold and are not told how long the wait will be, or when they input their account number and then have to provide it again when a customer service representative comes on the line.

Peter Mahoney, vice president for worldwide marketing at Nuance Communications Inc. of Burlington, a company that designs sophisticated speech recognition systems for companies such as Amtrak and United Airlines, said consumers like the systems and predicted acceptance would grow.

''It's similar to ATMs. People bypassed them at the start," Mahoney said. ''As people get comfortable with the technology and the technology gets comfortable with people, it'll be used more and more."

English's cheat sheet is unlikely to undermine the push toward automation, even though references to his list are spreading on the Web and it's closing in on 1 million hits. (Other items on paulenglish.com are more popular, including his favorite chocolate cake recipe.)

The cheat sheet is maintained by English and a handful of Internet volunteers, but the group often has a hard time keeping up with changes companies make.

English is no technophobe insisting on human-to-human interactions. He is the chief technology officer and cofounder of Kayak.com, a travel search engine that debuted this year. He said he is a strong believer in using technology to make life easier and likes automated consumer response systems, as long as they work.

But English said companies should adopt a universal standard for reaching a human, preferably by dialing 0. And, he said, companies should be wary of putting too much distance between them and their customers. Kayak, for example, requires all software engineers, including English, to respond directly to customer e-mails.

''It's shocking how much consumers slap us back into reality," he said. ''Big companies often can't do that. They're all about cost control."