Secret Prompts By-Pass ‘Voice-Mail Hell’

It’s a familiar scenario for all of us to heave a sigh when we have to call our cell phone company…or health insurer…or bank….or cable company.  We know it is a time suck.  We’re sent off into the auto-voice ozone for…well, for Verizon Fios, it averages 14 minutes.  For Microsoft Tech Support, 9 minutes.  Best Buy averages 15 minutes. 

Paul English is a geek that assembled a renowned work-around list for the customer service lines of major corporations.  Paul’s list gives you the secret prompts it takes to go straight to a human when your issue doesn’t fall within their audio FAQ.  It is a popular site.

Here are some examples:

 Bank of America  704-386-5687                                                                                                                 

This is their ‘Executive Relations’ line.  It is different from the line you use.  Feel free to use it.

 AT&T  888-387-6270                                                                                                                                          

Use this number.  It connects directly to a representative who assists you personally without transferring you.  No voice mail.

 United Airlines  800-864-8331                                                                                                                

Ignore the talking voice.  At each prompt, press 0 three times.

Comcast  800-266-2278                                                                                                                                  

Press *# at each prompt, ignoring the message. 

Key Bank  800-539-2968                                                                                                                                

Press ‘0’ at the first prompt.  At the second prompt, press 5.

 Another trick, if you don’t know the company’s secret code, is to say nothing.  Often, the system will repeat the question 3 times and if there is no response, pass you through to a person.

 There’s a lesson here.  These are large corporations.  Corporations that profess to care about customer service.  Corporations that can certainly afford to offer customer service.  Yet we’re all hungrily reading these secret techniques to get through to them.

 So how is the customer service for your company?  You spend quite a bit of effort attracting, nurturing and serving new customers.  How are they treated when the call with a question that doesn’t quite fit the FAQ?  Who do they talk to when they have an application question?  How are they treated by accounts receivable people when they fall behind? 

 As sales and marketing professionals this is our responsibility.  Other departments develop policies to guide their mission.  But we are the ones whose mission is to keep the company and the customer together. So if the policies don’t work, we owe it to our customers to speak out.  To change it.  To publish the ‘secret work-around codes’.

If your company has less than stellar customer service, and you know it, you are no better than the folks in the list above.  Think about that the next time you sit on hold, frustrated with the poor service.

Then speak out until you are heard and it changes.  Poor customer service only exists if sales and marketing enable it.

You can find an entire list of companies and their secret prompt codes at Paul’s site, www.gethuman.com.  I hope you aren’t on it.