2 Tips For Beating Automated Telephone Answering Systems

[Randy_]

I saw an Internet article on "TWITTER" (more later) and saw these two tips. Don't know if they will work, consistently; but some folks think they do so I thought I would pass them along.



1. Press 2 for the Spanish line. The agents on the Spanish line speak fluent English. I used to hire for a call center, and more often than not, the workers on the Spanish line were idle while the English-only lines were always buzzing.

2. Most companies offer a back door to a real person for those people out there with no tone-dial phones. All you have to do is not press any buttons at all, and after a minute or so, those systems will transfer you to a live person. I know this because I still use this trick almost every time I call for customer service.

 

[DSallee]

I do the second one also most of the time... get me through to a LIVE person a lot quicker... LOL it DOES work! Have never tried the first one....


Dave

 

[redfishsc]

Hmmm, me gusta el primero! I speak just enough spanish to annoy the heck out of migrant workers (or help them order a chicken sandwich with no pickles).



I have found that just blindly hitting "0" helps on a lot of menus, but I've used the wait-n-see method a time or two as well.

Thanks for the tips!

 

[jwoodwright]

The VA got smart on not pressing any buttons...
They now request you to "say the number"... if you don't, after a long pause, it tells you good bye and thank you for calling Veteran Affairs.

 

[Ozzy]

I will have to try that next time.

Here's a tip for those of you that get a lot of junk mail, I still do it to this day on the very rare occassion that we get junk mail. We used to get between 5 to 10 pieces daily, until I learned this trick. When you get junk mail with prepaid envelopes, put other junk mail in those prepaid envelopes, and send it to whoever sent it to you.

If nobody uses the envelopes, it doesn't cost the company anything but when you use it, it not only cost that company the postage but the other company gets to be annoyed by getting junk mail. Apparently, they use tracking numbers because after only a few months of doing this we pretty much stopped getting junk mail; we still get fliers but that's about it.

Oh yeah, if you get a prepaid envelope but don't have any other junk mail, just put a little note in it, or sometimes I'd even have my kids draw a picture, or I'd put a crossword puzzle in it that was started wrong on purpose.

 

[Randy_]

I've been doing the same thing for years.

Don't know that it has ever got my name off a list; but it is fun to know that I have loosed a mosquito in someones office!!

 

[monkeynutz]

In addition to the "dial 0" method, when you are on a voice recognition system, try saying "Agent" once or multiple times. This often throws the system off track and gets you sent to a real person.

 

[BigShed]

Not quite on subject, but the automated dial systems that call centres use to phone you have a delay built in between you answering the phone and a person coming on the phone, usually a few seconds.

I use this delay to filter out nuisance calls from call centres, if a person doesn't answer after a second or two, I hang up!

Works most of the time, but I have been caught out a couple of times by hanging up on people that I do want to speak to but weren't quick enough to answer my Hello!