Getting angry at the recording can actually serve a purpose, says Adam Goldkamp from the website GetHuman. He spoke to Inside Edition about how to best attempt to talk to another person when calling a customer service line.
‘Tis the season to be shopping and sometimes that means you need to deal with customer service. But dealing with customer service and getting an actual human being aren't always the same thing.
It's tougher than ever to reach a live human being these days.
Companies like Frontier Airlines and Facebook have eliminated human phone call interaction entirely.
Callers attempting to speak with someone at Frontier Airlines are prompted to press 1 if they’re calling from a mobile device and want to “start chatting.”
And when we pressed zero instead? They hung up.
In a statement, Frontier Airlines told Inside Edition it “recently transitioned to fully digital communications,” which it says enables customers get the information they need as efficiently as possible. The airline says it has found that most customers prefer to communicate with them via digital channels but added customers can still communicate with a real person via live chat on its website or social media apps.
Google still has real people on the other end, but it can take some time to reach one. A customer service representative finally picked up after 17 minutes on hold.
The department store chain Nordstrom is known for their first-class customer service, and so we put that to the test. Indeed, in less than 60 seconds, we reached a customer service representative.
No such luck with Delta Airlines, where we were told the “current hold time is one hour, one minute.”
Getting angry at the recording can actually serve a purpose, says Adam Goldkamp from the website GetHuman.
“Raising your voice, showing your frustration, the systems have a way of understanding the tone in someone's voice; That moves you to the front of the queue,” he says.
When in doubt, press pound.
“That'll help you just skip thru a bunch of the menus hopefully,” he says.
And the old trick of asking for an agent often still works.
“Repeating representative, operator, help, help, help, any of those things usually cut the system off and move you into the next menu,” he says.
