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Break out of "phone jail" with GetHuman
Merlin Mann | Oct 6 2007
In yesterday’s post about putting customer service numbers onto your mobile phone, commenter Joe suggested checking out Paul English’s wonderful GetHuman, a website that diligently collects and updates the phone numbers (and key punches) necessary to get you straight through to a human being at 500 well-known companies. I realize this site is ancient news to a lot of you, but I couldn’t believe I’d never featured it in its own post here; I’ve been loving and using the crap out of GH (and the preceding IVR) for years now. Consider the oversight rectified. Paul also shares some smart tips for intrepid information seekers (Hint: that fast “0” mashing tip has worked great for me):
A propos of nothingI seem to recall mathowie once telling me that if you repeatedly scream obscenities at a voice robot, you sometimes get straight through. I’m not sure if it actually ever works, but it just feels great to scream the f-word into a phone sometimes. Also new to me: here’s a list of the 500 companies and their secret knocks that’s suitable for printing at teeny-tiny size and sticking into your notebook or backpack. Or — if you’re feeling particularly ambitious — one imagines it wouldn’t be too hard to convert the HTML table into a CSV file that could pretty easily be munged into an importable list. Just if you’re feeling ambitious. Confidential to Paul: If it’s not a programmatic nightmare for you, I suspect that exporting your list to a downloadable vCard (with the secret code in “Notes”) would make you a hero. Also? You need you a prominent PayPal link, my friend. :) Great work, and thanks. Update 2007-10-06 17:27:12 PDTcshneid and dansays have each done us the honor of mashing up a vCard version of the GetHuman 500. So now you can get all 500 numbers into Address Book (and onto your iPhone) with a nice, easy import. Worked great for me! See post comments for more info. — mdm Update 2007-10-07 07:06:26 PDTPaul has added a tab-separated file and a vCard version of the gethuman database on his site. Whenever the database is updated, you can grab a new copy for your Address Book. Thanks for the fast response, Paul. more » POSTED IN:
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CVS File for import to AddressBook or Outlook
I have created the csv file for import to whatever will take it. It is identical to the data on gethuman.com, except I have replaced all of the commas in the notes section with semicolons.
Here it is: http://www.ownyourcomputer.com/GetHuman.csv
To import this into the OSX Address book, download it and then in the address book, go to file, import, text file. Then uncheck the 'ignore first card option' then fill in the three dropdowns with "Company", "Phone (work)", and "Notes". Then click ok. I then made a smart group with "Company is set" and "Name is not set" to filter it down.
For Outlook try http://email.about.com/od/outlooktips/qt/et031706.htm, although I haven't tested it yet.
VCard format for your importing pleasure.
Since I'm awesome, I clicked the 'export' button in AddressBook, and got a VCard formated file. You can download it at http://www.ownyourcomputer.com/GetHuman.vcf. Remember, this is just me munging the data that is presented on gethuman.com I didn't create any of this, I'm just changing the format to make it easier to work with.
Gah!
You beat me to the punch. I classed up the HTML file to create an hCard file, then pulled it through a converter to output a vCard file. Different approach, same results.
Re: Gah!
Wow! That was easy.
Tip: before importing, consider making a new Address Book Group with a name like “Customer Service Numbers” or whatever. After you import the VCF, the new entries will all be selected in the “Name” column, and you can just drag ‘em all right into the Group you created.
Thanks, Dan!
Alternate tip
Should you not remember to create your group before importing 300 contacts, don’t despair!
There is a group called “Last Import” in the address book. Click it, and you have all the contacts right there, you can select them all and create a new group for them.
(Also, some people may not realize that these groups work on tthe iPhone; when in contacts, there’s a < button in the upper left of the screen; tap it to get your groups.)
Vim for the Win!
I copy/pasted the whole html doc into Vim, then find/replace to make a CSV file, then through AddressBook to make it the vCard format. Good show.
response from Paul English from gethuman.com
Hi Merlin,
Great idea! I’ve updated the official gethuman site to maintain a VCF formatted file of the gethuman entries.
Each time the gethuman database is updated, the VCF file will automatically be updated too.
See http://gethuman.com/build/ for more info.
Kind regards, Paul
Re: response from Paul English from gethuman.com
Go, Paul!
Cursing
Telenor, the Norwegian mobile phone company has a funny feature on their support line. If you’re waiting in line and start cursing and shouting, they move you up the line. The reason for this is that they don’t want their customers to go completely ape before coming to the front of the line. But it can of course be used if you’re in a hurry. Just start cursing and shouting, and you’re going forwards…
I can’t help but feel that
I can’t help but feel that this is a frighteningly counterproductive idea.
Not from the customer perspective, necessarily, but rewarding people for cursing and being rude to (even robotic) agents strikes me as a Really Bad Thing. From a CS perspective, anyhow.
Not a negative comment aimed at you, just… eesh.
IVR ≠ person
You wouldn’t be yelling at a person, joshd; you’d be yelling at an IVR in order to try and trigger a “take this batshit insane caller directly to a live and helpful human” response.
In my experience, robots tolerate obscenity with remarkable elan.
Remember it’s mostly old people that robots hate. Because they want to eat their medicine.
Re: Break out of "phone jail" with GetHuman
thanks everyone for posting their comments, I never knew such thing exists...thanks once again
Issues with the GetHuman website...
Just had a look around the website and noticed that there is a “world” page which tells me that there are sections for the US, Canada and the UK - being in the UK that would be useful, but the site gives me a “403 forbidden” on the UK page.
Then when looking for an email contact address to report this problem, I discovered that the contact page (itself not immediately obvious) doesn’t have any actual email contact addresses on it…
Come on guys, every website should have an easily findable “contact us” page which allows users to email or submit a message, not a hidden one which is essentially a “see the faq pages”… there is a certain irony in not being able to contact a human easily from a website which is specifically about getting hold of humans…