Communications

Lucy Phone

img

No more hold music

Lucy Phone is a tool that has helped me deal with one of the annoyances of modern life: waiting on hold. From LucyPhone’s website you can look up the company or toll-free number you want to dial. LucyPhone acts like a conference call: it calls your phone and connects you to the company you wanted to dial.

At any point in the call when you’re placed on hold, you tap ** (star star) and LucyPhone takes over. You can hang up, and LucyPhone will call you back once an operator has picked up on the other end.

From the call operator’s perspective, once they take your call, they are played a brief message from LucyPhone while your number is being called. As soon as you pick up, you are connected to the operator.

The recently reviewed gethuman.com now integrates LucyPhone into their site so that the process is truly seamless, and you don’t even have to initiate the call.

The service is free for consumers. The only drawback I’ve noticed is that it only works for toll-free numbers, so you still have to do things the old fashioned way with companies with local only numbers.

I find LucyPhone much less stressful and annoying than my previous technique of putting the held call on speakerphone and hoping I didn’t leave the room at just the moment I came out of the hold queue.

-- Nicholas Hanna 09/28/12

© 2022