by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
Back in August 19, 2006 I wrote a short article called “GetHuman, is still going strong. In addition, a relative newcomer to this field is DialAHuman (www.dialahuman.com).
DialAHuman is a simple listing of about 450 companies. It lists the company’s phone number and the way to get a live person fast. For example, if you are phoning Yahoo, their instructions say, “Press 0 repeatedly, ignoring error messages”. (Now you know.)
In contrast, the original service, GetHuman lists thousands of companies, and often several phone numbers to reach those companies. For some companies, they even list a “live person” phone number so you’ll never get a voice menu in the first place.
GetHuman requires two steps. First, find the company listing either by browsing the thousands of entries, or by putting the company name in the search box. Then, when the company info comes up, press “DETAILS” for more information, and sometimes press “DETAILS” again for even more information. The good news is that you get much more information than you get with DialAHuman.
One cool feature of GetHuman is that is also lists the average wait times, whether it is only a matter of minutes (e.g. Verizon wireless only has an average wait time of 4.5 minutes), or hours—yes hours—like Facebook. Their average wait time is listed as a ridiculous 63.2 minutes—and that’s just the average wait time. About half of the people are going to wait much longer than that! Just for kicks I decided to try this number and GetHuman said the average wait time was 348 minutes— that 5.8 hours! (I sure hope they’re wrong!)
If you see that the average wait time is more than you want to wait with your ear glued to the phone all the while straining to listen carefully to those never-ending voice ads to be sure they aren’t the person you are waiting to speak with, here is another neat website for you—LucyPhone.
With LucyPhone you simply go to the LucyPhone website, enter the company’s phone number you want to dial, then enter your own phone number and hit “Start”. LucyPhone then dials your phone and when you answer, connects you with the company, at which point you choose your options. You then hang up your phone and LucyPhone will phone you back when a live person actually comes on the line. Cool, huh?
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Update: June 2, 2015
Dial A Human doesn’t seem to be working anymore. The screen just comes up blank.
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