Wednesday, February 22, 2006
gethuman advertisements
gethuman ads. We have started putting text-only ads on the right sides of our website, to help offset the costs of running this site. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please let us know.
posted by Paul English at 11:34 PM
Monday, February 13, 2006
gethuman jingle
gethuman jingle? No, I'm not really going to punish you by making you listen to a gethuman jingle (although I do hope you enjoy the video). But as I was talking with Bill Taylor today, I remembered an IVR idea I had many years ago. ..
As a "Type-A Techie", I like things which are concise. I despise verbosity, especially from computers. Why do I have to listen to the IVR menus of each company I call, only to hear them say "Please listen, as our menu options have changed". It isn't enough punishment to make me learn a different phone menu for each company, but now I have to learn the menu of the week?
Wouldn't it be cool if some consumer group came up with a STANDARD phone menu tree? So that any company you called would all allow stuff like: 0 for operator, 1 for customer service, 2 for sales, 3 for billing questions, etc. Then I would never have to listen to the stupid "Your call is important to us" nonsense. The * key might always mean go back and the # key might always mean confirm. Or something like that.
Maybe we should copyright a few musical tones as the gethuman jingle, and then we should define a standard phone menu tree, such jingle and tree put into the public domain. Then any company who wants to be gethuman compliant would change their IVR to first play the brief gethuman jingle (maybe less than one second long) which would tell the callers that they didn't have to listen to the phone system describing itself, but instead informing the caller that we could punch away.
Any musicians out there? posted by Paul English at 7:46 PM
As a "Type-A Techie", I like things which are concise. I despise verbosity, especially from computers. Why do I have to listen to the IVR menus of each company I call, only to hear them say "Please listen, as our menu options have changed". It isn't enough punishment to make me learn a different phone menu for each company, but now I have to learn the menu of the week?
Wouldn't it be cool if some consumer group came up with a STANDARD phone menu tree? So that any company you called would all allow stuff like: 0 for operator, 1 for customer service, 2 for sales, 3 for billing questions, etc. Then I would never have to listen to the stupid "Your call is important to us" nonsense. The * key might always mean go back and the # key might always mean confirm. Or something like that.
Maybe we should copyright a few musical tones as the gethuman jingle, and then we should define a standard phone menu tree, such jingle and tree put into the public domain. Then any company who wants to be gethuman compliant would change their IVR to first play the brief gethuman jingle (maybe less than one second long) which would tell the callers that they didn't have to listen to the phone system describing itself, but instead informing the caller that we could punch away.
Any musicians out there? posted by Paul English at 7:46 PM
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
How to read the gethuman blog
I've gotten a lot of questions about reading the gethuman blog. If you want to see when new articles are posted to this site, rather than making you come visit gethuman.com every now and then to see if there is something new here, you can simply add the "gethuman blog feed" (technical term :-) to your "blog reader".
I've simply been using personalized Google home page as my blog reader, so I can always see interesting content to me. Just enter "gethuman.com" to Google's "Add content" link on their personalized page.
Some details:
Many websites display an icon like this
to indicate a page which contains a blog. (For gethuman.com, the center column of this page is the blog.)
When you use Firefox (or even Microsoft browser) you should see that icon on the bottom of the browser window; that indicates the browser has detected the presence of a blog on the current page.
(If you want to figure out how to get your blog "recognized", see the "rss feed" meta-tag on this page.) posted by Paul English at 2:22 AM
I've simply been using personalized Google home page as my blog reader, so I can always see interesting content to me. Just enter "gethuman.com" to Google's "Add content" link on their personalized page.
Some details:
Many websites display an icon like this
to indicate a page which contains a blog. (For gethuman.com, the center column of this page is the blog.)When you use Firefox (or even Microsoft browser) you should see that icon on the bottom of the browser window; that indicates the browser has detected the presence of a blog on the current page.
(If you want to figure out how to get your blog "recognized", see the "rss feed" meta-tag on this page.) posted by Paul English at 2:22 AM
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Disconnect
Last night I had dinner with Brad Gerstner in Boston. We were talking about the idiocy of companies who think that preventing their customers from talking to their employees is a good thing. Brad pointed out the following disconnect:
Which do you think will result in companies learning how to improve their products and services, and getting more customer revenue? Spending a hundred million dollars on market research and advertising, or loving your existing customers? I think the latter. posted by Paul English at 6:17 AM
- Big company marketing departments will often spend 25 bucks or more to get a new customer to talk with.
- Big company customer service departments do everything they can to not talk with customers.
Which do you think will result in companies learning how to improve their products and services, and getting more customer revenue? Spending a hundred million dollars on market research and advertising, or loving your existing customers? I think the latter. posted by Paul English at 6:17 AM
Sunday, February 05, 2006
A response to a Dell telesales rep
A reader sent me this email:
My response: First, the purpose of this website is not to stick it to corporate America. The purpose of this website is to be a voice for a consumer movement including millions of people. Our goal is to change the face of customer service. A side effect of this is that we will stick it to companies with bad service (hopefully hurting their business and/or forcing them to change) but we will also help companies who provide good service, by highly recommending them to others.
As to your comments about gethuman.com "connect to sales" being hurtful to sales reps:
Sales reps are measured compared to their peers. The "connect to sales" tip will randomly choose any sales rep, so the few extra seconds to take and transfer a call to customer service should not impact your rating compared to your peers.
If this upsets you, complain to your company. If enough of their employees complain, it will help send yet another message to their employer that they should take the issue of customer service staffing more seriously.
We've also had some sales reps tell us that bypassing IVR and connecting directly to sales will not shorten the time on hold. First, that is not always true. We currently have 16 volunteers who edit the cheat sheet, and we have tested this technique, and it works with many companies. And even for companies for which this technique does not save the consumer time, it still saves the consumer the aggravation of having to deal with a computer. I would rather wait on hold for fifteen minutes without using a computer than instead being forced to spend three minutes talking with a computer and then spending only five minutes on hold. posted by Paul English at 11:06 AM
I applaud you guys for this website, I use one it often, but I have a suggestion about of your general tips. Specifically the one that reads 'connect to sales and have them transfer you'
While this generally works in my company, it can in many cases, cost the person answering the phone money. I work (in sales) for Dell computer, and while I understand that my company having a more efficient customer care setup would avoid this, there is absolutely no way I can change the situation from within. I am always helpful and transfer the person calling in, because they don't understand that they're costing me money, and furthermore could usually care less since by the time they get to me they're frustrated to their wits' end.
The reason it costs me money (and probably the majority of other companies' sales departments that people use as 'switchboards') is because call centers are based on phone metrics. My monthly bonus is, in part, based on how many calls I take versus how many systems I sell. If I transfer a person using me as a switchboard, I don't make a sale and that percentage goes down and it does wind up costing me real money (quite a bit actually).
As I said before, I know that the users of your web site could care less, and the whole idea behind this site is to stick it to corporate america, but cheating in this particular fashion hurts the paychecks of real people who are not responsible for the problem, and in doing that you're helping one group of people while unknowingly hurting another group who are not directly responsible for the problem nor have any power whatsoever to change it, and I don't think that that's what you want to accomplish with this site.
If I can help you in any way to improve the site I'll be happy to answer any questions about the way a call center works and perhaps offer alternative suggestions, but I do request that you please remove that suggestion becuase it goes against the principles behind your site when it degrades one group of people to assist another.
While this generally works in my company, it can in many cases, cost the person answering the phone money. I work (in sales) for Dell computer, and while I understand that my company having a more efficient customer care setup would avoid this, there is absolutely no way I can change the situation from within. I am always helpful and transfer the person calling in, because they don't understand that they're costing me money, and furthermore could usually care less since by the time they get to me they're frustrated to their wits' end.
The reason it costs me money (and probably the majority of other companies' sales departments that people use as 'switchboards') is because call centers are based on phone metrics. My monthly bonus is, in part, based on how many calls I take versus how many systems I sell. If I transfer a person using me as a switchboard, I don't make a sale and that percentage goes down and it does wind up costing me real money (quite a bit actually).
As I said before, I know that the users of your web site could care less, and the whole idea behind this site is to stick it to corporate america, but cheating in this particular fashion hurts the paychecks of real people who are not responsible for the problem, and in doing that you're helping one group of people while unknowingly hurting another group who are not directly responsible for the problem nor have any power whatsoever to change it, and I don't think that that's what you want to accomplish with this site.
If I can help you in any way to improve the site I'll be happy to answer any questions about the way a call center works and perhaps offer alternative suggestions, but I do request that you please remove that suggestion becuase it goes against the principles behind your site when it degrades one group of people to assist another.
My response: First, the purpose of this website is not to stick it to corporate America. The purpose of this website is to be a voice for a consumer movement including millions of people. Our goal is to change the face of customer service. A side effect of this is that we will stick it to companies with bad service (hopefully hurting their business and/or forcing them to change) but we will also help companies who provide good service, by highly recommending them to others.
As to your comments about gethuman.com "connect to sales" being hurtful to sales reps:
Sales reps are measured compared to their peers. The "connect to sales" tip will randomly choose any sales rep, so the few extra seconds to take and transfer a call to customer service should not impact your rating compared to your peers.
If this upsets you, complain to your company. If enough of their employees complain, it will help send yet another message to their employer that they should take the issue of customer service staffing more seriously.
We've also had some sales reps tell us that bypassing IVR and connecting directly to sales will not shorten the time on hold. First, that is not always true. We currently have 16 volunteers who edit the cheat sheet, and we have tested this technique, and it works with many companies. And even for companies for which this technique does not save the consumer time, it still saves the consumer the aggravation of having to deal with a computer. I would rather wait on hold for fifteen minutes without using a computer than instead being forced to spend three minutes talking with a computer and then spending only five minutes on hold. posted by Paul English at 11:06 AM
Saturday, February 04, 2006
welcome to the gethuman blog
We are a consumer advocacy site focused on improving the face of customer service. This movement is powered by over one million consumers who are angry about bad service.
We demand high quality, prompt, human customer support, by friendly, qualified people who we can understand, and who can handle our call without putting us on hold or transferring us again and again.
We will reward companies with good service by buying more products and services from them, and telling our friends and families about them.
We will punish companies with bad service by cancelling our accounts with them and instead using one of their competitors who has better service.
The recent launch of this website was first covered by Bruce Mohl of the Boston Globe, story here. posted by Paul English at 3:23 PM
We demand high quality, prompt, human customer support, by friendly, qualified people who we can understand, and who can handle our call without putting us on hold or transferring us again and again.
We will reward companies with good service by buying more products and services from them, and telling our friends and families about them.
We will punish companies with bad service by cancelling our accounts with them and instead using one of their competitors who has better service.
The recent launch of this website was first covered by Bruce Mohl of the Boston Globe, story here. posted by Paul English at 3:23 PM