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How to stop automated switchboards driving you barmy! Press 1 for frustration. Press 2 for fury. Meet the man who's unearthed the way to save your sanity when ringing the taxman or your bank

One night a few years ago, Nigel Clarke tried to phone his insurance company. The ordeal was an all-too familiar one — he was greeted by a prerecorded voice listing a series of ‘options’ designed to ‘properly direct’ his call.

After selecting one, he found himself listening to a second voice running through yet more ‘choices’.

He again selected one, only to arrive at a third automated message, then a fourth and a fifth.

Bright idea: IT manager Nigel Clarke compiled a list of 12,000 phone shortcuts that bypass automated messages

Finally, after negotiating six menus with 76 different ‘options’, Nigel reached the department of Aviva where someone was, in theory, supposed to be able to answer a simple inquiry about his home insurance.

‘Sorry,’ said the seventh pre-recorded voice to speak to him. ‘This department is now closed. Please try again tomorrow.’ And with that, the line went dead.

‘I felt like crying,’ Nigel recalls. ‘The office closed at 8pm on week nights. When I’d started the call it was about 7.50. But by the time their ridiculous system would let me speak to an actual person, they’d all gone home.

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‘I’d gone through all that for nothing. It was seriously, seriously frustrating.’

We’ve all been there. For in recent decades, automated corporate call centres, with their patronising hold music and endless menu choices, have become one of the great banes of everyday life — ‘the modern-day equivalent of Dante’s circles of Hell’, as Nigel puts it.

For most of us, a journey into the grim netherworld of IVR — that’s ‘interactive voice response’ — telephone systems is likely to end in the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth.

But Nigel, a 53-year-old IT contractor from Fawkham in Kent, doesn’t just get mad. He gets even.

Catalogue: The 53-year-old became frustrated when he struggled to get through to his insurance company because of the different options available

‘After that call, I thought “There’s got to be a way to do something about this”,’ he recalls. ‘Then I realised that, if you know the correct numbers to dial, you can usually bypass menu systems without having to listen to various options.’

So began a long journey of discovery that ended last week when Nigel launched www. pleasepress1.com, a website detailing the intricate call-centre  structures of some of Britain’s biggest organisations.

The site lists ‘shortcuts’ that allow users to wade straight through the intricate phone menus of 130 sprawling corporations — including the likes of Asda and Argos — to reach an actual person, in the department they want, in a matter of seconds. Has cyberspace ever, in its short history, provided a more useful service?

Surely not. Nigel’s site shows, for example, that Lloyds TSB customers wanting to make an accidental damage claim on their home insurance can reach an operator in seconds by dialling 0800 056 3040 and then entering the numbers 1-3-2-1-1-5-5. Each digit has to be punched in as the recorded voice starts to announce the options for that particular menu.

With a following wind, that will save the calling customer at least three minutes.

Good call: Nigel painstakingly listed the bypass numbers for 130 organisations, including Asda and Argos

Using other ‘shortcuts’ for such organisations as HM Revenue & Customs — which Nigel has identified as the proud owner of Britain’s worst call centre — can save users of the site as much as eight minutes per call.

But finding them out has been a long and torturous process. Indeed, Nigel, a divorcee who is separated from the mother of his two grown-up daughters and 15-year-old son, estimates that he has made 12,000 research calls to automated phone centres in recent years.

‘I’m lucky, in that my job as a contractor means I often have a few free days or weeks when I can do this sort of thing,’ he says. ‘To my face, friends and family have been very supportive, but behind my back you do get the impression that they sometimes wonder if I’ve been smoking something.’

Nigel says he isn’t opposed to IVR systems on principle; merely those that have been poorly designed or deliberately created to be time-consuming and frustrating to navigate.

Indeed, he suspects that many companies create systems with a large number of ‘menu options’ and several ‘levels’ of recorded menus to dissuade customers from complaining, or returning faulty goods.

‘When you want to buy something, there’s usually a freephone number that allows you to get straight through to an operator. But once they have taken your money, you often have to start paying to contact them — so the companies have a vested interest in making the calls as long as possible.’

Even worse than IVR systems, he says, are a new breed of ‘voice recognition’ menus which require users to make choices verbally rather than by typing numbers, and are therefore tougher to map and ‘shortcut’. 

‘They are already very common in America, but there are stories of more and more of them popping up over here,’ he adds.

‘In fact, there was a story in the news before Christmas about Birmingham City Council, which managed to install a new system that didn’t even recognise a Brummie accent.’

Keeping up with the call-centre industry’s efforts to increase its profit margins has, meanwhile, become a full-time job.

Initially, Nigel’s list of ‘shortcuts’ was kept on a spreadsheet that he circulated among close acquaintances. But as it grew, he became convinced that it ought to be held online, where members of the public could read it.

Since last February, he has therefore turned down all but a handful of work contracts in order to concentrate full-time on building the site, supporting himself financially with some casual tutoring jobs. Helping him out from time to time has been a loyal circle of family and friends and his sister, Jan, who has allowed him to use her garden shed as an office.

‘There have been moments when I’ve thought “I must be mad!” But it was an itch I just had to scratch,’ he says. ‘And this could have real potential. I mean, Google started in a garage.’

Early signs are indeed positive. Since its formal launch last week, www.pleasepress1.com, which is funded by advertising, has been visited by roughly 250,000 users.

Nigel is meanwhile searching for venture capital to help him improve the site’s technical capabilities.

 He would also like users to help ‘map’ the IVR systems of Britain’s local councils, which he says have ‘some of the worst’ call centres in the country.

‘It would be great to eventually employ a few people,’ he says. ‘Call centres are everywhere, so if this takes off, who knows where it could end up?’

And, no matter how large his internet venture grows, does he hereby promise never to install an automated phone system?

 ‘Absolutely,’ he says. ‘That’s  a promise.’

Handy: Nigel's quick list to help you bypass those annoying automated messages





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