Consumerist: Time to Human

Time to Human: Play With Our Numbers

popkin — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 13:02:42 EDT

We spent the last three weeks calling up cell phone, airline and bank call centers and seeing how long it took them to pick up. Rather than pretend we're took stats in college, we're posting the raw data here. It's up to you to crunch the numbers, make pretty graphs and figure out what it all means.

We're talking mean, median, mode, pretty graphs, best and worst and so forth. Hey, surprise us with your stat skills!

The best crunchers will get Science Award certificates.

Here's the data in an excel sheet and as a text document.

Post your findings on your blog and/or email them to us at tips@consumerist.com, or post in the comments.

Previously: Time to Human thread.

Time to Human, Banks, Day 5

popkin — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 14:03:22 EDT

Ring ring, Mr. Banker, pick up the phone, we hit the stopwatch and hang up. Here are the results.

A tight race this week. It'll be interesting to see Monday how the time between airlines, banks and cellphone companies stack up against each other.

Previously: Time to Human thread.

Time to Human, Banks, Day 4

popkin — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 14:28:31 EDT

Today's results in our week-long test of how long it takes banks humanoids to pick up the ring ring ring.

Apparently at Citibank, 420 is a bank holiday...

Time to Human, Banks, Day 3

popkin — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 14:36:16 EDT

The results of today's benchmark test to see how long it takes banks' live humans to pick up the phone.

Does the excitement ever stop?!?!

Previously: Time to Human thread.

Time to Human, Banks, Day 2

popkin — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 13:18:56 EDT

In a stunning upset, Commerce Bank moved to first place and US Bank, yesterday's champion, staggered and fell behind. MBNA, while shaving off about four minutes time from yesterday, still finished amongst the laggards. Impressive gains for Washington Mutual as well.

We should convert this into a race track game and take bets on it. We would get Fidelity to underwrite it but what if we had to contact their customer service?

Previously: Time to Human thread.

AirTran Wins, Midwest Loses in Fastest Telephone Customer Service

popkin — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:03:32 EDT

Here's the results of our week-long investigation into how fast it took airlines to pick up the phone.

AirTran wins, proving themselves not just lean, and cheap but an efficient airline. Midwest.. we think they're using Wright Brothers era bicycle parts in their telephone switchboard.

You can check our math by downloading this Excel sheet with the raw data.

Previously: Time to Human thread.

Time to Human, Banks, Day 1

popkin — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 14:34:27 EDT

We'll be calling up the banks this week to see who's the quickest at having a human pick up the phone.

For those playing at home, we apologize but this week the data is presented in seconds instead of minutes. For some reason, excel doesn't like playing with a base 60 system this week.

Washington Mutual, despite launching a campaign recently touting their friendliness and how much they're not old, white, bankers, performed poorly. And despite being overwhelmingly perceived as evil, Citbank was quick on the phone draw.

Last week we did airlines and before that, cell phone companies.

Time to Human, Airlines, Day 5

popkin — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 14:25:20 EDT

All week we've been calling the airlines to see how long it takes their customer service reps to answer the phone. Here's today's rankings:

Look! It only took us a week but we finally came up with a graph that actually conveys information!

The whole week we've just been hanging up when the reps pick up. Today, we were silent and let the reps end the calls themselves. Midwest, while a loser time-wise, was the best at patiently waiting for us to speak. Mellissa repeated "Hello, Midwest Airlines, how may I help you?" three times. Then she said said how sorry she was that she couldn't hear us and she might have to disconnect. Then she warned about how she was going to disconnect soon. Then we punched a random, yet merry, melody into the keypad. She hung up after that.

Raw data and week averages Monday.

Previously days here.

Time to Human, Airlines, Day 4

popkin — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 13:46:21 EDT

Midwest, while once again the loser, performed slightly better today.

Something is up with Song/Delta as we had to call several times to get past a persistent busy signal. United and Alaska Airlines really fell off today as well.

When you're on hold for United, they have some pitch for their airborne snacking service, which we ignore until the cherry voice goes, "Peanuts, peanuts, peanuts, our onboard snacking blah blah blah..."

Try saying peanuts three times fast over a crackly cell phone, you'll hear what we mean...

Time to Human, Airlines, Day 3

popkin — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 13:46:01 EDT

Nothing can stop us from calling up all the airlines and comparing how fast it takes a carbon-based life form to pick up the phone. Not even the tinkly pianissimo of Midwest's hold line. We foil all the automated response system's attempts to pry out more information about an actual ticket using the short circuit shortcuts provided by GetHuman.

For Midwest, we fear the worst, that the pressures of baking fresh cookies with ever-shortening supplies of time and sugar have caused them to go all Sylvia Plath, thereby shortchanging the customer service representative staff.

Previously:

Time to Human, Airlines, Day 2

popkin — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 13:44:17 EDT

We're calling the major airlines this week to see how long it takes them to pick up.

Gawd, we love this job.

Many of the customer service reps at Midwest are still busy baking baking cookies, please hold.

Previously:

Time to Human, Airlines, Day 1

popkin — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 15:53:12 EDT

The statistics train keeps on rolling. We called up many major airlines this afternoon and here's how long it took for them to pick up.

What are they doing over at Midwest? Browsing amongst the corn rows? We wonder.

Nextel Wins as Cellphone Company With Fastest Telephone Customer Service

popkin — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 12:40:52 EDT

Here's the results of our week-long look into how long it takes humans at various cellphone companies to pick up the phone. Sprint was dead last and an old-school Nextel support line, first. Verizon and T-Mobile trailed not far behind.

Calls were made around noon for a week. We use the GetHuman database to use secret codes and hacks, which are said to be the fastest ways to reach a live person. This also provided a universal and fair way to gauge the response time. Raw data after the jump.

Sunday is missing from the data set because we had to help our mom pack some boxes.

Next industry up for our review: airlines.

Fire up the grill, it's some raw data.

Time to Human, Mobiles, Day 5

popkin — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 13:39:00 EDT

Only two more days to go in this week's look at how long it takes a human at various mobile phone companies to pick up.

Sprint, once again, sucks the most. We feel like Virgin Mobile would be faster if we didn't have to leapfrog through so many sub-menu's to get to a person. Also, Cingular would be faster if we actually had a Cingular number to enter, as reader Will points out. Their time is delayed while we keep pressing pound to short-circuit the system.

No raw stats today, you can get them on Sunday when we wrap this up.

Next week: Airlines!

Time to Human, Mobiles, Day 4

popkin — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 14:29:37 EDT

Today's results in our week long trial to see how long it takes mobile phone carrier's humans to pick up on the customer service line.

A very poor showing from Sprint. No surprise there. One wonders if their notoriously bad customer service might be amplified by the customer having to wait so long, making the consumer more likely to view the service in a negative light. T-Mobile posted a stunning under six second response time for two day's straight.

So far, the ranking for best average pickup time are, in order of worst to best: Sprint PCS, AT&T Cingular, Virgin Mobile, Verizon, T-Mobile, Nextel.

Raw data to date, after the jump.

RAW! RAW!

We can't wait to make our pretty bell curve.

Previously:

Time to Human, Cell Phone Companies Day 3

popkin — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 13:34:05 EDT

All the mobile phone carriers performed very well today.

T-Mobile picked up after only two seconds. AT&T Cingular was the worst. So far they've had a fairly mediocre showing, on average.

To provide consistency, we use the GetHuman database of the phone-hacks and codes to short circuit the automated voice response gauntlet and reach human fastest. After the jump, raw data, for those so inclined.

Mmm, steaming fresh data.

Previously:

How Long to Get a Human?

popkin — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 13:40:49 EDT

Here's how long it's taking to reach a human at various mobile phone carrier customer service lines today.

Nextel wins again. The biggest movers versus yesterday's test are AT&T and Sprint. Virgin Mobile features an "organic" electronic voice operator to navigate their system. She opens with, "Hey, what's up? I'm Simone and this is Virgin Mobile at your service. What do you want to do?"

We use the customer service hacks in the GetHuman database which are supposed to be the swiftest ways to get a live person on the line. For those so inclined, raw Excel stats after the jump.

Raw excel data:

Yes, we're purposely staggering who gets called first.

Previously: How Long Does it Take to Get a Human?

How Long Does it Take to Get a Human?

popkin — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 15:51:41 EDT

In the wake of purple ribbons, zombies and looking up words in the dictionary, we thought we might want to try something resembling journalism. To that end, we've started the Time to Human project.

Each week, we pick an industry and call up their customer service lines around noon. We see how long it takes to get a person and post a graph of the results. We round up the numbers at the week's end do another industry the next week. When we're done, we will compare the results across industries.

This week we're calling mobile phone companies. Today is a good day to be a Nextel customer.

To provide consistency across companies and industries, we use the numbers and hacks provided in the GetHuman database, which purports to contain the swiftest ways to reach a customer service human by phone.