Think about when you pick up the phone to call a credit-card company, an airline, a bank or another service-orientated company about some pressing issue. More than likely, you're calling because you need to speak to someone about a problem such as a questionable charge on your credit card statement, you're trying to make a plane reservation or you want to speak to a bank teller for clarification on some banking service.
In most of these cases, your time is limited and you need answers quickly. You know what needs to be asked and, most of the time, a simple response would get you the answer. But when you call, you don't get a person. You get a phone tree.
A phone tree is one of those automated-voice systems that says something like: "Thank you for calling the XYZ Company. Your call is very important to us. Please select from the following nine options. Please make sure you listen to the entire menu, because our options have recently changed." (That last statement is there to instill doubt. Companies just want you to listen to the entire menu, even if you recently called and know what keys you pressed the last time. I hate them for this.)
To continue, you finally hear the option you want and key it in. You are then presented with a sub-menu of choices: "Please select one of the following seven items." You listen and make another selection. You then hear: "Please select from the following six options" – and so it continues.
Somewhere around the third sub-menu, your mounting frustration makes you either give up and slam down the phone, or you start pressing random phone keys in hopes that you will escape the phone tree and get connected to a live person who can actually help you. And when you finally are about to reach that person, you discover that you must wait, because calls are taken in the order that they were received – and your estimated time to wait is around 17 minutes.
It's usually at this point that I either contemplate suicide or wish the person who invented the phone tree would die a slow and agonizing death. In any case, when I do finally speak to a live person, I swallow my tongue, lest I make a comment I might regret later on.
There must be a better way to quickly get to a live person on the phone and now, thanks to Bringo, there is.
When you visit the Bringo Web site, you begin by searching a list for the company you want to call. Bringo lists businesses alphabetically or by category, such as credit card, health care, etc. Bringo has a growing list of over 800 companies so far.
After you find the company you're looking for, you enter in your phone number. This is so the Bringo Web site can call you back once a live person at that organization is reached. Bringo assures users that personal phone numbers will never be given out to anyone, and I believe this to be the case. After entering your number, Bringo offers an option to have the system remember it for future use.
Now all you have to do is click on the big blue "Fetch" button. The first time you use the service, Bringo will dial your phone number to make sure it is yours. When you answer your phone, an automated voice will tell you to press the pound sign to confirm that it is, in fact, your number. From then on you won't have to go through that step ever again. This system is in place for added security.
On the Bringo Web site, you'll see a simple display that says "You" and the status of the call being made to the company you've selected. Beneath that information, you'll see the name of the company you're calling. A status display will let you see the steps Bringo is following to navigate the company's phone tree. Finally when Bringo reaches a live person, the system will call your phone. A pleasant voice tells you to press the pound key to be connected to a live person at the company. Press it, and you're speaking to a live person from that company. Amazing.
I tried Bringo several times, calling different companies, and every time it got me through to a live person who could help me in a matter of moments.
Life is good once more.
At the very end of the process, Bringo shows you a screen that asks if the service worked and requests you to type in any comments about your experience. This helps the good people at Bringo fine-tune the navigation steps needed to circumvent each phone tree and get you to a live person. This effort by Bringo's users – along with a quarterly maintenance update by the service – helps ensure that the phone-tree navigation is accurate, because companies typically change their phone trees for one reason or another.
Using Bringo is a free service and works with any computer that has Internet access and a Web browser.
I think Bringo is a wonderful service, and its efforts deserve the highest praise from any of us who have been subjected to the inhumane torture of having to deal with phone trees. Now you can once again reach out and touch someone – and that someone will be live.
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source: palmbeachdailynews.com
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