Customer Service Secret Revealed

(CBS)  If you have ever called a company's toll free number, chances are you have gotten stuck talking to a computer. But as The Early Show consumer correspondent Susan Koeppen reports, there is a way to get a human being on the phone in just seconds, if you know the right buttons to push.

More and more companies are now using automated systems to deal with customers. It costs them less money but its costing consumers their patience.

"I find it maddening, as a consumer, when I'm calling a company that I pay, like my phone company, my cable company, and they refuse to let me talk to a human," says Paul English, who was so fed up with those automated systems, he created a list of more than 100 companies and the shortcuts you can use to get a real person on the phone.

Since posting it on his Web site, more than a million people have downloaded his cheat sheet.

"I get tons of feedback. I think one of the funniest ones I got was a priest sent me an e-mail and he said he was going to nominate me for sainthood or something like that," says English.

The cheat sheet comes in handy because getting a customer service representative isn't always as easy as pressing zero.

Take Discover Card for example: to get a human, you need to press the star key several times.

At E*Trade, the shortcut is pressing the pound key over and over.

When Koeppen used the cheat sheet to call her credit card company, it took just 14 seconds to be connected to a human being.

The list is so popular it is going international. Paul English is starting a list of shortcuts for companies in the U.K.

English figures out the shortcuts mostly by trial and error. He also gets e-mails from people who have figured out shortcuts, and from customer service representatives, who feed him inside information and give out the secret to getting a human on the phone.

Also, not all companies have switched to a computerized answering system. Callers to Nordstroms for example still get a human when they call.

To get to Paul English's "cheat sheet" of tips to get real people to the phone in customer service departments, click here.