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.
time to human
Time to Human, Banks, Day 5
By 4.21.06
Ring ring, Mr. Banker, pick up the phone, we hit the stopwatch and hang up. Here are the results.
Time to Human, Banks, Day 4
By 4.20.06
Today’s results in our week-long test of how long it takes banks humanoids to pick up the ring ring ring.
Time to Human, Banks, Day 3
By 4.19.06
The results of today’s benchmark test to see how long it takes banks’ live humans to pick up the phone.
AirTran Wins, Midwest Loses in Fastest Telephone Customer Service
By 4.17.06
Here’s the results of our week-long investigation into how fast it took airlines to pick up the phone.
Time to Human, Banks, Day 1
By 4.17.06
We’ll be calling up the banks this week to see who’s the quickest at having a human pick up the phone.
Time to Human, Airlines, Day 5
By 4.14.06
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:
Time to Human, Airlines, Day 4
By 4.13.06
Midwest, while once again the loser, performed slightly better today.
Time to Human, Airlines, Day 3
By 4.12.06
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.
Time to Human, Airlines, Day 2
By 4.11.06
We’re calling the major airlines this week to see how long it takes them to pick up.
Time to Human, Airlines, Day 1
By 4.10.06
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.
Nextel Wins as Cellphone Company With Fastest Telephone Customer Service
By 4.10.06
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.
Time to Human, Mobiles, Day 5
By 4.7.06
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.
Time to Human, Mobiles, Day 4
By 4.6.06
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.
Time to Human, Cell Phone Companies Day 3
By 4.5.06
All the mobile phone carriers performed very well today.
How Long to Get a Human?
By 4.4.06
Here’s how long it’s taking to reach a human at various mobile phone carrier customer service lines today.
How Long Does it Take to Get a Human?
By 4.3.06
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.
