One less thing to wait for: a live operator

Recently I had to reach out to one of my computer suppliers at home, in this case Dell (one of several I use at home and at work, so I’m not singling them out). Although I had some difficulty in getting through to an operator on the phone, I was able to get incredible results using Dell’s on-line service: only a couple of days after submitting my under-warranty request, I received the replacement part I needed. Great stuff.

Around this time of year I see an increase in the number of news reports around the dissatisfaction of customers with automated phone systems (commonly referred to as “IVRs”). We use such systems at Microsoft and I have to admit that I use our automated operator all the time to call coworkers at the office – the voice recognition is is very reliable.

But for those companies where there seems to be an endless run-around on the phone in search of a live person, I found a reference today to the IVR Cheat Sheet for Businesses  – it provides a guide for getting through to a live person on the phone quickly and with little hassle. Given my recent post on how to reach the Xbox service centre I thought to post a reverence on this helpful reference page.  

For Dell Service, I was happy to find a sequence on this page for accessing a live person: 800-624-9897, then press option 1, dial ext 7266966, press option 1, then press option 4 and finally press option 4. 

Of course, I was happy to read that Microsoft is fairly straight-forward…

“Microsoft – 800-936-5700 – Always dial 0. This is true for just about any MS number.”