Cool Hunting

The grey-haired among us can remember when customer service lines employed human operators on the frontlines rather than the sycophantic automated phone system that leads the customer through byzantine corridors toward dead-ends or endless loops. Negotiating these labyrinths and reaching a live human being in a call center in some far-off land is often the hardest part of the journey toward customer satisfaction.

Whether it was touch-tone dialing or globalization that wrecked telephone customer service isn't important. What's important is the organized resistance in the form of the Gethuman movement. Each listing directs you the fastest and simplest way of bypassing the confounding labyrinth of automated choices getting you to a live human operator.

Founded by Boston-based Paul English, a consumer advocate, this website has a catalog of call centers from large-scale retailers to utility companies in the United States, Canada and Britain.

You may have seen Gethuman around the internet already, but we thought such a valuable resource bears repeating. Especially because it puts many companies on notice by encouraging users of the site to rank individual telephone customer service. This interactive feature helps bring accountability to call centers and empower the consumer.