Google Answers: Need top 500 US Consumer (ie. most often called by consumers) Companies/Orgs

View Question

Q: Need top 500 US Consumer (ie. most often called by consumers) Companies/Orgs ( No Answer, 0 Comments )

Question

Subject: Need top 500 US Consumer (ie. most often called by consumers) Companies/Orgs
Category: Business and Money > Economics
Asked by: gethuman-ga
List Price: $100.00

Posted: 04 Apr 2006 17:02 PDT
Expires: 04 May 2006 17:02 PDT
Question ID: 715498

The www.gethuman.com folks are looking for a list of top 500 companies defined as "most often called by US consumers for customer support". This is a very different list than the Fortune 500, for example. Please do not take this question unless you can find a good answer. I realize this is a difficult thing to find, which is why we are going to pay $100 to the researcher who can best answer this question. If you have more questions about this question :) please add a clarification comment before you try to take the question.
Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 04 Apr 2006 17:28 PDT gethuman-ga, Nice to hear from you...I've had you guys bookmarked for quite a while, now. As I'm sure you're aware, a Top 500 list based on number of customer service calls is something that, well, just doesn't exist. I doubt we can bring it into existence. However, we can certainly pull together a list of well-known companies that with a high volume of customer service calls, based on the SERP standing of their page for searches on [ customer service ] or [ tech support ] and the like. For instance, with a quick look at some search results, I put together a list like this: AMAZON.COM BARNES & NOBLE.COM BESTBUY.COM BORDERS BUY.COM Circuit City.com Columbia House DVD Club Columbia Tristar Home Video CompUSA Disney DVD DisneyStore.com Ebates eBay eCampus Half.com HBO Home Video HP Home & Home Office Store J&R.com K-MART KBToys.com Mattress.com MCI MyPoints NetFlix Overstock.com Paypal.com RocketCash Sears TARGET.COM The Sharper Image Toshiba Tower Records WalMart.com My guess is these ARE all top 500 companies in the sense you defined, though I've no way of knowing for sure. If this looks promising, let me know. I can certainly put together a list of 100 -- maybe even 200 -- such companies, though I don't think I could get all the way to 500. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this, pafalafa-ga
Clarification of Question by gethuman-ga on 12 Apr 2006 20:23 PDT Hi. Sorry for the late responseto your request for clarification! We are very interested in your idea of SERP-- it is quite a clever idea! Is there a way we can discuss this so we better understand it? If so, maybe your explanations to our questions will suffice for us paying you the $100 for this question, we might not actually make you do the work of getting the list if we can instead really understand this. (We might then write a Perl script to automatically get this list once a month or something like that.) I'm not sure the best way to setup a phone call from Google Answers. We might not want to post our phone number on this site for everyone to see :) but maybe if you send a feedback to us at www.gethuman.com we can then contact you offline? Kind regards, Lorna from GetHuman.com
Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 13 Apr 2006 07:18 PDT Lorna, Thanks for your note. Just so you know...all communications that take place with researchers happen right here on the pages of Google Answers. No phone calls, emails, etc are allowed, I'm afraid. I'm on the road right now, with only intermittent access to the internet. When I'm back home in a few days, I'll get back to you with a full explanation of the SERP strategy. You can then decide if it will meet your needs as an answer to your question. But if you need information faster than that, let me know, and I'll see what I can do. Stay tuned... paf
Clarification of Question by gethuman-ga on 13 Apr 2006 16:58 PDT Paf, Thank you for your response. I look forward to hearing from you in a couple of days and we'll just have to make this communication via google work. Thank you for the speedy reply.
Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 15 Apr 2006 16:34 PDT gethuman-ga, Thanks for your patience. With some trial-and-error searches, I was able to find some search parameters that provide pretty good results in terms of zeroing in on the types of customer call-in services you seem to have in mind. The results offer the advantage of any good search engine, in that the most popular sites appear at the top of the list of search results, so they provide at least a reasonable proxy for the number of customer service calls being made. The results aren't perfect, mind you. Many pages will pop up that are only tangentially related to your interests. However, I think you'll find that the results may be good enough to get you pretty close to your ultimate goal. There are numerous ways to target this type of search. I started with a Google search (natch) on the following: [ 800 OR 866 OR 888 OR toll-free help-desk OR customer-service OR technical-support OR tech-support ] which looks for sites that (1) have the phrase "help desk" or similar sorts of phrases such as "tech support" (let me know if their are other phrases you think should be added here) and (2) contains either 800, 866 or 888 or the phrase toll-free to pick up the toll-free numbers. Here are the results of the search: ://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2005-04,GGLD:en&q=800+OR+866+OR+888+OR+toll%2Dfree+help%2Ddesk+OR+customer%2Dservice+OR+technical%2Dsupport+OR+tech%2Dsupport+ which returns some (heh-heh) 338 million results, and includes top-tier listings for such companies and organizations as: FedEx - Customer Service Food Stamp State customer Service Numbers State Farm toll free technical support MCI - Customer Service Macromedia Asia Pacific Florida Department of Education 1-888-GEEK-HELP . . . and so on. There are many ways to fine-tune this. For instance, the search can be modified to only return .com listings, if the .gov and .org results are of lesser interest to you. Anyway...have a look, and let me know what you think at this point. And thanks for a fun challenge. paf
Clarification of Question by gethuman-ga on 17 Apr 2006 20:46 PDT Dear paf, Thanks so much for the additional information. Give me some time to review and consider and I'll get back to you. We really appreciate your input and ideas. Thanks. gethuman-ga
Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 30 Apr 2006 17:05 PDT Hi there. Just checking in...have you had a chance to look things over? paf
Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 02 May 2006 19:10 PDT Hi guys. Just a head's up that there's only a day left before your question is set to expire. If it does, and you find you would like any additional information, just post a new question and let us know what you need. Cheers, paf

Answer

There is no answer at this time.

Comments

There are no comments at this time.

Important Disclaimer: Answers and comments provided on Google Answers are general information, and are not intended to substitute for informed professional medical, psychiatric, psychological, tax, legal, investment, accounting, or other professional advice. Google does not endorse, and expressly disclaims liability for any product, manufacturer, distributor, service or service provider mentioned or any opinion expressed in answers or comments. Please read carefully the Google Answers Terms of Service.

If you feel that you have found inappropriate content, please let us know by emailing us at answers-support@google.com with the question ID listed above. Thank you.

Search Google Answers for

Google Home - Answers FAQ - Terms of Service - Privacy Policy