For those of us with jobs that require our presence M-F, 9-5, calling customer service for personal issues is often a real pain in the neck.  It would be one thing if you could solve your problem during a 15 minute break from your usual workload.  But customer service phone calls seem to be taking longer and longer, with endless time spent on hold – and those infuriating automated responders who delight in saying: “I’m sorry?  I didn’t get that.”

Fortunately, there’s a website making its way around the Internet called GetHuman.com.  GetHuman provides the names and toll-free numbers for hundreds of regularly used customer service organizations in a host of categories like automotive, credit, banking, government, insurance, telecommunications, and shipping – and gives you precise instructions for how to bypass the automated prompt and connect immediately to a live human.  The site also offers these general tips in the event that your company of choice isn’t listed:

1. Interrupt. Press 0 (or 0# or #0 or 0* or *0) repeatedly, sometimes quickly. Unfortunately the same keystroke does not always work for each company. Many IVRs will connect to a human after a few "invalid entries", although some IVRs will hang up.
2. Talk. Say "get human" (or "agent" or "representative") or raise your voice, or just mumble. The IVR might connect you to a human after one of these key or unknown phrases.
3. Just hold, pretending you have only an old rotary phone.
4. Connect to account collections or sales or account cancellation; they always seem to answer quickly. First ask them for their name and rep number (so they know you are writing it down, and thus so they are more likely to help you.) Then ask them to transfer you to the department you need. Sometimes they will put you ahead of the queue, although sometimes they will send you to the end (and thus in those cases this tip is useless).
5. Toll call. For credit cards, if the expected wait time is too long, hang up and try to call back on their non-toll-free number, as they often have shorter queues.
6. Selecting the option for Spanish will sometimes get you a bilingual human more quickly than if you just waited for an English-only operator.

 Thank you, GetHuman.  Now if we must risk spending our time at work making personal phone calls, we can at least know we’re being productive about it.