You have a problem with a company and you want to resolve it quickly. What is the best way to reach a real person?

You can try calling. But you may spend precious minutes sorting through menu options in order to get connected to a human being.

Pressing zero at each prompt doesn’t always work. And if you push the wrong button, you’re back to square one, waiting on hold again.

You can try sending an email. But some companies have done away with an email address for customer service, sending you to their live chat or online web forms.

Internet companies can be especially hard to reach. When I tried to contact Twitter over a security issue with logging in, I couldn’t find a phone number or an email address.

I had to go through online menus and find one that fit. Twitter took six days to reply — an eternity in the online world — with a link to a help centre article that I had already read.

So, how did I resolve the problem? I sent tweets to Twitter’s Toronto office and finally got someone to listen and call me back.

Next time, I’ll go to GetHuman.com, a U.S. website set up to help customers get through to companies as quickly as possible.

There, I found a phone number for Twitter. But it’s not toll-free, so you have to call the company’s San Francisco head office for customer support by phone.

Get Human is a Boston-based company, started in 2005. It has three people compiling updated phone numbers and menu options, so that you can reach a live person on the other end as quickly as possible.

There are 162 Canadian companies in the database. They include:

Telecom firms (Bell, Rogers, Fido, Telus, Wind Mobile).

Retailers (Hudson’s Bay Co., Canadian Tire, Future Shop, Best Buy, Kobo Books, Lululemon, Dell Canada, Home Depot, Bloomex).

Energy service providers (Enbridge, Toronto Hydro)

Loyalty programs (Aeroplan, Air Miles).

Government agencies (Canada Post, Canada Revenue Agency, Citizenship and Immigration Canada).

How did Get Human get started? Adam Goldkamp, chief operations officer, gave me a quick history.

Paul English was trying to help his father who had Alzheimer’s disease. When his father called a company and was left waiting on hold, he forgot why he was calling in the first place.

English put together a list of the companies his father called regularly and posted it. Get Human was a big hit, but lay dormant after the founder went on to develop Kayak.com, a popular travel site.

In 2009, Christian Allen took over as chief technology officer. He added mobile apps and hired Goldkamp, his former college roommate who had left a career as a Wall Street trader to look for another opportunity.

Get Human uses crowdsourcing to keep its information accurate and current. Along with phone numbers and menu options, it has average waiting times for calls to many companies (provided by site users).

For Bell Canada, the average wait is eight minutes. For Rogers, 18 minutes. For Aeroplan, 23 minutes. And for Canada Revenue Agency, 38 minutes.

While it gets revenue from online advertisers (such as Hudson’s Bay, Safeway, UPS and TD), the company’s primary goal is helping customers contact companies a little more quickly and a little less painfully.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“We’re looking for Canadian phone numbers,” says Goldkamp, who wants to beef up the non-U.S. part of the site. (I’ve already given him a few ideas.)

Send emails to volunteers@gethuman.com or Adam@gethuman.com to provide your hard-won intelligence on how to reach companies effectively.