Skip the VUI

You know the drill: you had to call customer service for your cable, your bank, your ISP, your medical insurance, or your cellphone company. You call the 1-800 number and now you are stuck with the VUI (voice user interface). It's another annoying thing in life that you really won't want to deal with.

Well, now you can skip the phone trees. Here's how it works (from BRINGO: Stop Talking to Machines and Talk to Real Human):

1. Find the company you'd like to call by category (credit cards, mortgages, loans, health care)


2. Enter your phone # (we will never disclose your phone number to anyone, not even your mother!).


3. Wait a few seconds while we navigate the phone tree.


4. When we call you back, pick up your phone and you're done. No more phone trees.

All the major banks (Citi, Bank of America, etc), Credit cards (Amex, Capitol One, etc), Mobile (Sprint, Cingular, etc), Airlines (Air France, UA, Delta, JAL, etc) are all listed with this service and I suspect that the list will only keep growing as businesses try to demonstrate that the customer is king.