A standard for interactive voice response (IVR) systems created by Paul English in 2006. Designed to provide common functions for phone trees, the gethuman website also includes a database of phone numbers for obtaining a live person for customer and technical support at major companies.
Some of the gethuman functions are being able to dial zero for a human, bypass long prompts, to interrupt and go back to a menu while waiting and to receive updated estimated wait times at reasonable intervals.
An Ear Icon - The Gethuman "Earcon"
When users hear the gethuman "earcon" at the beginning of an IVR session, they know the phone tree is compliant with the gethuman standard. See
IVR and
phone tree.