Now The Number's Up

Newcastle Herald

Wednesday March 15, 2006

Jeff Corbett

IN the old days we'd make our way into town and go directly to the government department, bank or insurance company office, fill out a form at a desk along a wall, stand in a queue for perhaps 10 minutes, hand the forms over the counter, ask a few questions, pay our money and, after a flurry of stamping, leave with papers in hand.

If we'd made the trip into town just to renew our car insurance or sort something out at the bank, time taken may have been, including the travelling, an hour.

These days there may be no counter. In most cases we're required by national companies to conduct our business by phone, paying by card and, often, asking questions of someone sitting in a call centre overseas. (When I phoned Citibank yesterday I found myself talking to a woman in Malaysia.)

Time taken can be as little as five minutes or as much as an hour, although often lately it is less than 15 minutes.

Unfortunates forced to deal with Centrelink by phone can wait for hours, or days, to get that invisible mass's computers simply to accept a call. Centrelink's youth allowance number was engaged the five times I dialled it yesterday, although I don't suppose there's much point accepting the call if Centrelink is going to keep you waiting on line for hours. Clearly Centrelink needs to create more jobs in its call centres.

Still, my experience is that national firms have improved dramatically the accessibility to a real person.

Even Telstra doesn't seem too bad, and the few times I've called a bank I've been taken aback by the early appearance of a real person on the other end.

Five years ago I wrote of an intransigent Merewether man who spent 80 minutes listening to how valued his call was to NRMA Insurance before a real person came on line to accept his car insurance renewal. Yesterday Catherine at NRMA Insurance was ready to do the deal after only one minute and 20 seconds.

But still we have to sort through the options if you want to report your paternal grandmother for snoring please press seven and it is a strangely irritating and uncertain exercise. Often I find that I'm at button five option before I realise I should have pressed button two. Do I really want to hear these options again?

And so to the Australian Banking IVR Cheat Sheet on an Australian website, www.emptorium.com (search IVR onsite), which is collecting shortcuts to a real person on the phone in our big organisations. So far Emptorium has shortcuts to 19 financial organisations.

Take the Commonwealth Bank. If you hit the 0 (zero) button three times after your call to the standard number 132 221 you go straight to the queue to speak to a consultant, the word for a real person. I checked six times yesterday and you do.

The time saving is not as much as you'd expect, although it is a valuable saving for the increasing number of people who use their mobile in lieu of a fixed home phone.

Yesterday morning, for example, my button-pushing call to the Commonwealth Bank took three minutes and 11 seconds to reach Daniel; the 000 shortcut took two minutes and 18 seconds to reach, strangely enough, the same Daniel. In the afternoon it was much the same, three minutes and 10 seconds pushing buttons and two minutes and 14 seconds with the shortcut.

At 3 o'clock yesterday afternoon I reached a real person at Telstra on the residential line 132 200 in one minute and six seconds, and that was after a recorded voice apologised that "this is taking longer than usual". On a second call I encountered a voice-recognition computer that wanted me to tell it why I'd called in just a few words. It cut out abruptly when I swore at it and referred me to Matthew, so there's a small tip from my foul mouth.

Here's a few of the codes: Aussie Home Loans 131 333 shortcut 0000, American Express 1300 132 639 0#, ANZ 131 314 , NAB 131 312 ###, Westpac 131 900 0 (wait five seconds after call answered), and, not financial but useful, Qantas 131 313 . These shortcuts worked beautifully yesterday and took me to the general desks in the call centres.

Neat.

jcorbett@theherald.com.au

© 2006 Newcastle Herald

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