SPOILER: At the end of this piece, there are a couple of handy cheats to navigate quickly through phone menus.
I’ve all but given up on the concept of “customer service” lately. I honestly cannot recall how many times I’ve called for help on a piece of electronic gear only to be routed to an outsourced, overseas support center (it’s cheaper that way, right?) and was read a phone script designed to quickly walk me through my problem. (Note: It never does.) I’m also way beyond the naivete where I send email to a technical support center and actually expect a usable answer. In most cases, I receive something back that’s unusuable and written in broken English (not Broken English like the Marianne Faithful album, but just really unusable text).
Then my guitar tuner went out, and the folks at Onboard Research (makers of the Intellitouch Tuner) restored a little of my faith in humanity. I’ve had an Intellitouch PT1 Tuner for years. I use it on my acoustic guitars, mandolin, and ukelele. I was even using it on my electric guitar before I had a floor-based pedal tuner.
The PT1 clips onto the guitar headstock and works on vibration. This means you can tune in a bar, in a club, or even outdoors. It has a backlight, so you can tune in a dark corner. And it swivels, so your audience doesn’t need to see it. For that extra touch of professionalism, you can tune with the PT1 facing only you while you talk to the crowd. From their perspective, it looks like you’re tuning by ear. Very nice.
One of the “flat” arrows went out a few months back, which made tuning tricky. I’ve had the thing for years, so I figured I’d just toss it and get a new one. My friend Sherry suggested I call because they have great customer support. I found their web site, called their toll-free number, and got a real human being (i.e., no phone tree).
The fellow on the phone said, “Just send it back. And if you don’t mind, drop in a couple of bucks to handle shipping.” That was it. I dropped it in the mail a week ago, and yesterday (even with Christmas snail mail madness), I received a brand spanking new tuner.
The moral to this story? Sometimes, things just work out. And sometimes, people are really helpful. I need to remember that in the coming year.
So that spoiler I promised? The next time you’re tangled in the branches of a phone tree, try one of these methods to get to a real person:
- If you’re stuck in a numbered menu, press the “0” key repeatedly. Like 7 or 8 times. 98% of the time, it routes you to the operator. This tack was born out of frustration, but my cousin who used to work on these things said it’s a common back door that’s designed intentionally.
- If you’re wandering aimlessly through a voice-activated menu, start “speaking in vegetables” (Seriously, say “broccoli”, “tomato”, “yam”.) The menu won’t understand and will take you directly to the operator. I first tried this tactic with much more colorful language when I discovered it. I’ve since started using the more family-friendly, vegetable-laden approach.