Never Wait on Hold Again!

Who has time to sit around on hold listening to the same soft rock songs over and over again? Or worse, listening to silence, not sure if you’re still connected or stuck in some Hold oblivion. And don’t even talk about the frustration that voice-activated customer service can cause.

The idea of the FastCustomer app for iPhone and Android, cofounder Aaron Dragushan tells the New York Times, is for your phone to call a customer-service line and call you back when a human being is on the line to deal with your question.

The app contains the numbers of more than 2,500 companies, the Times reports; the consumer chooses which to call and then the app navigates the system until a human picks up the phone, thinking that it has a human on the other end. Instead, the Times reports, an automated voice tells the customer-service rep, “Please press one for your next customer.” When the CSR taps one, the consumer’s phone calls them back so the two human voices can connect.

Some reps, of course, don’t press the button and hang up instead. When the Times tested the app out, one of its calls went seamlessly while the other called back with a useless automated CSR on the line. FastCustomer immediately took that number off its app while it was investigated,

Some “computers block calls from FastCustomer,” which Dragushan attributed to being because “the computers see hundreds of calls from a single, toll-free phone number, and register them as some sort of nuisance attack,” according to the New York Times. Because of this, FastCustomer is planning to move to a non-800 number. Take a look at the screen shots below: