Home » Press & Commercial » The GetHuman Standard » Core principles

Contribute now by sending us your ideas here

Throughout the development process for the gethuman standard, several core principles continually surfaced. It is essential that compliant organizations embrace these principles and build on them to best achieve the Standards. Core principles include:

  • Humans first - In cases where a human is available, a human should quickly answer the call and determine the caller's need. If appropriate, the human can offer a self-service option to accomplish tasks and thereby merely act as a natural language interface to the system's Main Menu. Callers who prefer to use automation will elect to do so. Those requiring or otherwise preferring human assistance will have it.

  • Make it easy - The system should be so easy, convenient and efficient to use that people will willingly choose to use it. As a rule of thumb, such systems should permit the user to accomplish tasks faster than by interaction with a human.

  • Efficient prompts - No prompt content should be included unless it improves efficiency of task completion for the user. "Legalese" should not be included unless it is absolutely required by law. Cliché phrases, which have become meaningless to consumers due to overuse and lack of trust of phone systems, should be avoided. Examples include: "Your call is important to us." "Please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed." "You can access our website to answer most questions."

  • Systems are not humans - Automated systems that try to sound human can be patronizing to consumers. When a consumer calls with a serious issue, they do not want to be greeted by overly friendly and cheery personas. Avoid using personas such as these that will annoy callers.

  • Listen to your customers - Regularly survey users on call quality. Respond to frequently heard complaints in a public, visible forum, indicating what you are changing to address the frustration. Organizations should use this data to trend improvement over time, to bonus call center executives, to impact support representatives' compensation and training, and to benchmark against the industry.

  • Logical flow - Self-service applications should have logical flow. For example, it is unacceptable to obtain a caller's account number, and then ask if he/she would like to open an account.

Reviews of companies from other GetHuman users

companywhat they sayhold time 
DirecTV "got a bill for direct tv and didnt ..." 102 mins -j..., 11 mins ago more »
Hewlett Packard Busine... "I called and after explaining the s..." 15 mins -d..., 1 hr ago more »
Starbucks Coffee "friendly service. Staff mskes it a ..." less than 1 min -l..., 2 hrs ago more »
EMC Mortgage "Horrible Customer service." 40 mins -m..., 2 hrs ago more »
EMC Mortgage "I was transferred back and forth be..." 40 mins -m..., 2 hrs ago more »

Did you know...

GetHuman has a FREE iPhone™ app

Why not have all of these numbers and cheats waiting for you on your phone next time you want to call a company?

No need to call information, the app opens right to company search, and within a few taps, you're ready to call with the shortcut you need.



was this helpful? help others find GetHuman.com by clicking these social bookmarks: technorati
The GetHuman™ website is Copyright 2004-2010 by Paul M. English; Updated 30 Jul 2010, 12:01 AM




loading...
Link to this page:   close
From Edit menu, choose 'Copy', then paste in email, blog, or wherever you like