50-Plus Hacks and Tips to Get to a Real Person at Any Corporation in 10 Seconds or

I don't get the one that says: Don't call the toll-free number. Companies do not want you to wait on hold if they're paying for it. Aren't companies paying for toll-free calls and don't they not pay for non-toll free calls?

Seconding Billco. I've designed many dozens of IVR trees as a contractor, for the Social Security Administration, Hewlett-Packard, the City of Los Angeles, MCI, Bank of America, Dell, and Home Depot. If you try to jump out to some random employee's phone in the hope that they'll connect you with the right person, you will lose. Most employees who don't work in the call center don't even know the main call center number. They'll often just ask you to call the helpdesk # If they do know how to transfer a call into the call center, the IVR will drop you at the _end_ of the queue, not in the beginning. You will wait such as long using this technique as if you had dialed the call center in the first place. So don't follow that bit of advice. It will do you no good. Dialing random digits rarely helps. Most dialed string handlers in IVR apps sanitize their input, so if they can match your input with a dial-out, they will. If they can't, they may take you to an operator, or they will just drop you at the start of the IVR tree and you have to start over. Trying to call a call center agent directly is broadly speaking a waste of time. Many of their phones don't have inbound access. Many others are located in other area codes Planning your call time is a very good suggestion. Monday's are bad--especially Monday mornings. Just afterwards lunch is as well bad. Anytime towards the end of a shift is not good. And if you're calling together as some major problem, forget about it. If you have a problem with your consumer equipment, and find a way to call into the business support line, you may have some luck. Even though most call center agents on the business support side are required to dump consumers over the fence to the 'home' support side, some of them can be sweet-talked into helping you. On the whole, they have the same tools to view your account, etc. And oftentimes they're not so stressed or irritated from having to deal with a hundred Jane Doe's trying to get their printer working that they can help you with your problem. Clearly, if they've had a busy day dealing with their business clients, at the time all bets are off. Getting through to the CEO is as a rule a win. _However_, this can't be your first move. They won't in effect punch through their organizational cobwebs for you unless they know you've already tried and failed to do this yourself.

I can assure you that using a LOUD tone of voice & screaming profanities DOES get you through to a human with VERIZON's crappy phone tree. Just remember, when you DO get a HUMAN, do NOT swear and treat them rudely, remember, these tips are to help you GET THROUGH to a human ... remember to treat others as you yourself want to be treated ! Peace ...

Few of these

I have to disagree with a few of these... above all when you get transferred, even if it's from the CEO himself, you on the whole get dumped at the end of the queue. I know this is fact at Dell, HP, JP Morgan Chase and probably many others. That's just how the call routing software works. There's as well the human element of error. When you call someone other than the department you to tell the truth want to talk to, chances are they don't as a matter of fact know where to send you because it's not their area of expertise. They're not receptionists, so you're quite likely to get bounced around a few times previously getting to your final destination. Maybe the worst side-effect is that you'll effectively contribute to a longer, more captive phone tree as the employees complain that they get misrouted calls all the time. It's bad enough to work in a call center, where every little detail is tracked, analyzed and charted. Don't go making it worse by trying to outsmart the system. If you dislike long twisty phone trees, ask to speak to someone in call center operations and voice your complaints. If you don't tell them, how can they know ?