Fonolo Lets You Bypass Company Phone Menus 171
An anonymous reader writes "Fonolo, a Toronto based voice 2.0 company, helps you avoid those annoying company phone menus by letting you skip ahead in the company phone system using a process they call 'deep-dialing.' Just search for the company on their website (apparently they have over 500), and you'll see a visual representation of the company's phone system. Then you just select the option you want, put your phone number in, and Fonolo calls the company on your behalf and dials you back when the agent is available — for free. They have a business product that provides this same service (visual dialing), plus virtual queuing and data pass-through." One company creates a phone system designed to encourage you to hang up to save them money. Another creates a phone system designed to make it easy to stay on hold indefinitely. I wonder where this ends.
I hate Shaw.ca (Score:3, Informative)
I called shaw.ca about my business account. After waiting for over 20 minutes a call center drone answered. Gave all my info then he asked for my business PIN. Huh? So he said he'd mail it to me and it would arrive within 5 minutes. "Can you wait for me to get it?" "NO, so, sorry, we're not allowed to wait." "So I have to wait 5 minutes then wait another 20 on hold at Shaw?"
I guess he didn't like that because the PIN never did arrive. Fuckers, I HATE SHAW.
Re:Comcast has a service that does the same thing (Score:5, Informative)
Hi there, CEO of Fonolo here.
Great to see all the enthusiasm!
> I can't imagine why more companies don't do this.
That's actually a really interesting question. The idea of letting the customer hang up and then get a call-back when an agent is ready is called "Virtual Queuing" (VQ), and has been around for a long time. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_queuing [wikipedia.org].
Why don't we see it more often? It is not for lack of interest, as some of the comments have said. There has been strong interest in VQ for a long time. Waiting on hold is actually lose-lose approach to queuing: Customers get pissed off, and the company wastes money (keeping the lines open). There have been virtual queuing systems available for over a decade. They remain rare, not because companies don't want them but because they require installation at the call center and, in today's call center environment, that's costly and often impossible. Why impossible? Because of the widespread use of outsourced call centers. If you're sending some of your calls to a 3rd party, you can't force them to install any custom equipment. For more on this: http://www.shaiberger.com/2010/10/when-will-we-stop-waiting-on-hold [shaiberger.com]
Brief plug: Fonolo offers a service that allows companies to add virtual queuing without any changes to their call center. http://fonolo.com/features/virtualqueuing [fonolo.com]
- Shai
Re:For free? (Score:5, Informative)
Hi there, CEO of Fonolo here.
Our consumer service is offered completely for free.
We make money from our enterprise product which you can read about at http://fonolo.com/ [fonolo.com]
Why do we offer the free service?
1) It promotes what we're doing (especially when we get slashdotted!)
2) It showcases our technology (the engine that runs the consumer service is also at the heart of the enterprise product)
3) It lets us try new features and learn about the best way to improve the call center experience.
4) We wanted it for ourselves!
- Shai