There’s no law against putting your customers on hold while waiting for a live agent, but that doesn’t mean you should operate a contact center that way. Today’s customers are no longer just armed with a telephone line to complain, but they’ve got smartphones and social networks to make their complaints louder than ever and reaching greater number of ears.

Virtual queuing has been around for a long time, but it is still rarely implemented. This awesome feature allows a caller to keep his/her place in queue even after disconnecting — and have the system call back when an agent is available to speak.

Fonolo is one of the companies focusing on this very niche. According to CEO Shai Berger (in a comment he’d left on the blog last year):

So the big question is, why have these features been so rarely implemented? The answer, we’ve learned, is that today’s call center is very resistant to innovation. Proprietary standards, multi-site operations and outsourcing have made for a very difficult environment for anything new to be deployed. So Fonolo’s answer is to add the smarts “from the outside”. That is, we don’t require anything to be installed at the call center. I believe this approach is what’s needed to break the log-jam.

That’s certainly true and a main reason why enterprises are implementing cloud solutions. But then there’s also a fundamental reason: cost.

The old school, well-established VQ vendors will get the job done — after selling you servers, software, licenses, and professional services. However, there are thousands of companies with a decent website but a small contact center, and these folks simply cannot dish out the money to buy all those components.

Fonolo’s VQ solution is very web-centric, requiring no additional premise hardware or software. Now with its new flat rate pricing, virtual queuing is no longer out of reach for any contact center. How would you like to implement VQ at $10 per agent per month, without having to deal with any infrastructure changes?

Don’t be shy to say Hi to Shai (@ShaiBerger) at ITEXPO Miami going on right now! I’ve spoken to him and met him before — he’s never made me wait!

Press release:

TORONTO – - Feb. 2, 2012 – Fonolo (fonolo.com), the company that helps organizations reduce call center costs while improving the customer experience, announced today that virtual queuing is nowwithin reach of any call center. By offering self-serve online setup along with flat-rate pricing, Fonolo is making it effortless for companies to promise their customers, “you’ll never wait on hold again”.

Everybody Hates Being on Hold

For decades, the call center industry has been stuck with the out-dated concept of placing callers “on hold,” whereby callers grow increasingly frustrated and companies spend money unnecessarily tying up phone lines. Virtual queuing solves these problems by replacing hold time with a call-back, when an agent is available.

Though commercial systems have been available for more than a decade, adoption of virtual queuing has been slow. The complexity and expense of implementation, driven by proprietary systems, a lack of standards, and costly consulting and integration projects have all been contributing factors.

A Breakthrough

In 2009, Fonolo revolutionized the call center world by introducing the first ever cloud-based virtual queuing system, thus completely removing the integration barrier. Since then, Fonolo has handled more than one million minutes of calls for companies ranging from one of North America’s largest banks to companies with only a handful of agents.

Today, Fonolo is demolishing the expense barrier with clear and affordable pricing. Companies can now set up virtual queuing for $10 per agent per month.

“Our success over the past few years has allowed us to build infrastructure at the scale necessary to support this breakthrough flat-rate pricing. We’ve known for a long time that many companies would love to offer virtual queuing to their customers, but have simply found the process – and the pricing – daunting,” said Fonolo Co-founder and CEO Shai Berger.

“Our customers have more important things to do than to sit on the phone listening to hold music. Now Fonolo will wait on hold for them and call them back when an agent is on the line. This is a fantastic value. You can’t put a price tag on a happy customer,” said Jeremy Watkin, director of customer service for Phone.com.

Companies that deploy Fonolo can offer their customers visual navigation, integrated directly into their web or smartphone properties, in addition to other innovative customer experience enhancements.
Learn more at fonolo.com.

# # #

About Fonolo

Fonolo’s cloud-based call center solutions provide companies with visual dialing and virtual queuing services, improving customer satisfaction and lowering call center costs. Callers simply click on the phone menu option they want from the company’s website or mobile application, and Fonolo connects them to the right agent – every time.

A growing list of organizations, including the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Sirius Satellite Radio Canada and VoIP Supply have discovered the value of using Fonolo to connect their call centers with their web sites. The privately-held Toronto-based company has received numerous awards, including “Best Contact Center Solution” from ITEXPO Conference, “50 Best Websites” from Time.com, “Best New Product” from Emerging Communications Conference, “Judges’ Choice” from GigaOm’s Mobilize Conference and “Top Telecom Idea” from Springwise.

What can $750,000 do for a young company that already boasts 50,000 users across its iPhone and Android apps? According to TechCrunch, FastCustomer (previously covered here)

will be using the new financing to expand its team, increase user acquisition and  expand to other platforms. [CEO Aaron Dragushan] hopes that one day customers will be able to use the service by text.

Being on hold waiting for service in no fun. FastCustomer is a no-brainer mobile app that saves you time with just one click.

Others in the virtual queuing space include Fonolo and LucyPhone. Recently Fonolo has seen success in attracting business customers, whereas LucyPhone continues to serve consumers.

Have you used these services? Please share your experience with other readers.

My first VoiceCon in 2010 was so much fun (oh yeah, I also learned a lot and made quite a few new acquaintances) that I knew I had to plan for Enterprise Connect 2011. It was also my first live on-site coverage for insideCTI (I’d just started the blog a month earlier), so I really didn’t know what to expect. In 2010 my family tagged along for the 8-hour road trip to Orlando to provide moral support (in the form of “We get to visit Mickey!”) and endured a few days of hotel stay with me, away from the comfort of our TV, sofas, and beds. I would go to the conference during the day, return to the hotel for a “home” cooked supper, then start organizing my notes in order to start burning the midnight oil on the blog. Thankfully the hotel WiFi offered decent speeds.

This year I flied solo, road trip and all. Driving myself for eight hours down Interstate 75 was rough — the various segments of road work made it worse — and again I was reminded that I’m not in college anymore. Still, I think eight hours was about the threshold before I’d gladly subject myself to TSA groping. Had the conference been held in Miami then the TSA would’ve had me by my… Well, you get the idea.

The Gaylord Palms Resort (commonly known as the “biodome” to returning conference goers) hadn’t changed much: the same lush plants, the humidity, the bored alligators, and lots of Avaya banners. Yep, no doubt I had arrived at the right conference when I walked in early Monday morning to pick up my media badge.

Before the trip I’d thought that Skype would be the most talked about exhibitor (and David Gurle, VP Skype Enterprise, also a featured keynote speaker). After all, everybody Skypes these days. And that’s both at home and in the office, both audio and video. Skype’s intention of moving into the enterprise market is also well known now. Some may even say that Skype’s one of the first unified communication applications.

But frankly Skype Enterprise didn’t have anything spectacular for this conference. A partnership with Citrix GoToMeeting, a pitch of 24/7 support tied to SLAs, and a closer relationship with Avaya (a sibling company also sharing Silver Lake Partners as an investor). Disappointedly, nothing too exciting, especially when details were hard to come by too. Was it being overly conservative and cautious because of the planned IPO this year?

The debut of the Innovation Showcase was awesome. Not only did I get to learn about new companies (ProtonMedia, Radish Systems, harmon.ie), but Fonolo was one of the winners and I got to catch up with CEO Shai Berger. I hope the showcase becomes a regular part of Enterprise Connect (and winning companies granted better booth locales).

Speaking of innovation, I was introduced to Hookflash CEO Trent Johnsen whose company came in second in the recent StartupCamp 3 in Miami. Always a pleasure to meet a tech entrepreneur outside of Silicon Valley (he’s from Calgary, Canada).

The always professionally dressed and equally professionally equipped Dan York, Director of Communications at Voxeo, was kind enough to meet with me to chat about his company and the conference in general. Too bad he didn’t divulge any juicy news about possible acquisitions, but he did touch upon some things such as Voxeo’s new office, growth in its Beijing office, and a new data center in Asia. He also wondered why Google or Apple — two companies representing Android and iOS, respectively — weren’t represented at any of the sessions discussing UC mobility. I shared that same sentiment. I eagerly await the year when either of those companies shows up at Enterprise Connect…

Data networking giant Cisco proved it’s not just a one trick pony with SocialMiner winning Best of Enterprise Connect 2011. This social customer care solution monitors social media networks and lets a company effectively respond to customers. (Side note: Avaya also has a similar product called the Social Media Manager, and compared to SocialMiner the UX was night and day.)

The highlight of the trip was probably the invitation-only media dinner hosted by Verizon on Monday, at a steakhouse inside the biodome. The dinner was great (had the buffalo steak and bread pudding for dessert), but even better was the opportunity to chat with folks from Verizon and Cisco, not just about UCCaaS but really having regular conversations at the dinner table. Alas, it’s good to know that marketing people are humans too and not androids programmed to divulge only corporate press releases.

Was there a low point? Unfortunately, yes. If anyone found a VirginMobile MiFi hotspot, please return it to me. It’s a blogger’s best friend and I’d lost it sometime on Tuesday, March 1.

But overall, I had a blast this year. Although I didn’t do much liveblogging (I do love liveblogging though) this time, my tweet stream was fairly consistent during the events I attended. And kudos to the good WiFi coverage at the venue this year, most of the time my iPhone 4 was able to last till the end of the day even with heavy tweeting. In fact, lots of people participated in #enterprisecon (I hope Dan’s thumbs are okay) and it made the conference even better!

Enterprise Connect 2012 is March 26-29 at the same biodome. What will next year’s hot topics be? (Please, not interoperability…)

Fonolo’s also a winner in the Innovation Showcase. I was excited to learn that Fonolo and its CEO Shai Berger were to be at the show this year because it’s one of the companies that I follow with great interest being in the contact center industry. Today the company announced Sirius Canada as a customer to use Fonolo’s technology to improve the subscriber experience when trying to reach a contact center agent.

On Monday I asked Berger to offer some IVR therapy to readers via recorded video. That’s right, there’s no need to press zero to reach the Fonolo CEO.

Updated: Press release:

TORONTO — March 8, 2011 — Fonolo, the company that makes it easier and less frustrating to call large companies, announced today that Sirius Canada, the country’s leading audio entertainment company, has signed an agreement to use Fonolo to improve the calling experience for its subscribers.

Fonolo’s visual dialing solutions enable callers to connect directly to the right agents, bypassing phone menus and eliminating hold times. This technology, first pioneered with Fonolo’s award-winning consumer service, now empowers businesses to improve the customer experience while reducing call center costs. Since October of 2010, Fonolo has been available on the Sirius website, contributing to a notable rise in caller satisfaction.

A friendlier alternative to phone menus
“Providing a satisfying experience to our subscribers is a top priority for Sirius,” said Mark Morais, Director of Customer Operations for Sirius Canada. “Like most companies, we need a phone menu to direct callers to the right agent. Fonolo provides us with an easy way to give callers a much friendlier alternative to the phone menu by allowing us to call a customer back when the next available agent is ready. This helps us keep existing customers happy and streamlines the sign-up process for new customers.”

Fonolo’s web component appears in several places on the Sirius website including the ‘Contact Us’ page (http://www.sirius.ca/en/contact). It presents consumers with several “call buttons” for common tasks, such as “activation” or “account management”. After making a selection, the consumer receives a call back from Sirius when the appropriate agent is ready.

“Sirius is dedicated to staying on the cutting edge of customer service and we’re delighted to be working with such an innovative company,” said Fonolo CEO Shai Berger.

Virtual queuing from the cloud — an industry first
Sirius is using Fonolo’s “Hold for Me” technology to eliminate hold times for its customers. In doing so, Sirius becomes the first company to offer this ground-breaking service to the general public.

“The idea of getting a call back when the next agent is ready has been a dream in the industry for decades,” said Berger. “While several ‘virtual queuing’ solutions have been on the market for years, implementations are rare because they always require intense integration at the call center. Our ‘touch-less’ approach is a major game-changer for the industry.”

Industry analyst Jon Arnold commented in a recent Focus.com brief that, “one of the biggest challenges facing any contact center is minimizing the hold time for callers … Virtual queuing really is win-win technology, as it makes contact centers more productive and effective, and it addresses a major shortcoming of the end user experience.”

Cloud-based approach means easy deployment
“Ease of deployment was a key component in our decision to implement Fonolo.” said Morais. “We didn’t have to install anything or change the way our agents work.”

Fonolo, unlike similar solutions on the market, does not require integration with the call center — typically a complex and costly process. Rather, calls handled by Fonolo appear to the call center as regular inbound calls, meaning that no changes are required to existing equipment and no software has to be installed. This cloud-based approach means that any company can easily add Fonolo to their call center.

# # #

About Fonolo

Fonolo helps organizations improve the call center experience for their customers while reducing costs. A growing list of organizations, including the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), have discovered the value of using Fonolo to connect their call center with their web site. The privately held, Toronto-based company, has received numerous awards, including “50 Best Websites” from Time.com, “Best New Product” from Emerging Communications Conference, “Judges’ Choice” from GigaOm’s Mobilize Conference, “Top Telecom Idea” from Springwise and “Top 25 Canadian IT Up and Comers” from the Branham Group. For more information, visit www.fonolo.com.

About Sirius

SIRIUS Satellite Radio Canada, one of Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies, is the country’s leading audio entertainment company with more than one million subscribers. SIRIUS offers 120 channels of commercial-free music, premium sports, news, talk and entertainment programming from studios in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and New York. SIRIUS offers listeners unparalleled coast-to-coast signal coverage and digital quality sound broadcast from four high-orbit satellites.

Media Contact

Fonolo, Inc.
media@fonolo.com
+1 416-366-2500 x222

 

Nobody likes waiting in queue since the invention of the HOLD button. Then the smarties thought adding music would make the on-hold experience more pleasurable.

Well, we all know how that turned out.

Long ago I’d done a couple of projects implementing a virtual queuing feature. It required plenty of customization and worked only with the Nortel PBX. Cool solution, but quite limited. However, obviously a niche area for innovation and opportunity.

Virtual Hold Technology did exactly that and became the go-to solution for virtual queuing (VQ). Founded in 1995 it has dominated the market for VQ implementation. The solution requires on-premise hardware and software, and works with major contact center suites like Genesys, Avaya, and Cisco.

But as we all know, times are a-changing. It’s a world of cloud computing, Web 2.0, and smartphones. Savvy entrepreneurs are looking at VQ in a different light and making it sexy again.

The two disruptive companies to enter this niche are LucyPhone and Fonolo. Both have been covered on this blog previously as well as in other press. But “better” press would be from the blog of a competitor, because that’s when you know you’ve become a credible threat. From VHT’s blog titled “I applaud the concept, but LucyPhone could be hurting more than helping” in August:

When consumers use Lucyphone on the web or as a smartphone app, they select a customer service number from a huge directory of companies that has been provided to them. They may be calling the right company, but is it the right number? Not always. So, despite your company’s efforts to route consumers to the best skilled resource on the first call, they may become frustrated when they need to be transferred around the organization.

This happens with or without IVRs, with or without virtual queuing. This isn’t even a valid argument in this case. I doubt VHT or LucyPhone or Fonolo is able to determine whether a customer dialed the right number. It’s virtual queuing, not call routing.

Then came the FUD factor — security:

Next, after Lucy makes the call on the consumer’s behalf, he or she is directed through your company’s IVR menus where a PIN code, claim number or credit card number may be required to proceed. What happens to this information? With Lucy basically conferenced into the call, is it possible that she’s collecting and storing this private information? Is the consumer knowingly or unknowingly trading privacy for convenience? While I doubt the Oristian brothers have nefarious intentions, consider that the outsider who hacks into Lucy’s brain might. But if your company offered a virtual queuing solution that was fully integrated with the contact center, wouldn’t the consumer have the benefit of both privacy and convenience? In addition, when consumers are transferred to a holding queue, they tell Lucy to stay on the line for them and then hang up. She calls them back when it’s their turn to speak with a rep. Lucy detects when she’s reached a customer service agent and tells the agent to “hold on” while she calls back the customer and patches them through. But does Lucy drop off the call? Or is Lucy listening and recording everything being said? I don’t know for sure but the thought is frightening.

In which LucyPhone co-founder Tom Oristian aptly addressed in the blog comments. Fonolo’s Shai Berger also chimed in with his analysis and opinion:

OK, there are really two separate issues here. LucyPhone differs from VHT in that it is a) cloud-based rather than on-premise and b) unilateral vs bilateral.

To me, it seems that LucyPhone’s “unilateral approach” is what makes it disruptive. Power to the consumers via a no-nonsense smartphone app. Crowd-source the list of company phone numbers on its website. VHT may have a hard time understanding this, but this is the perception: If your technology isn’t accessible from the fingertips of the user, then you are part of the problem.

To use VHT’s solution the caller still has to go through the evil IVR and get to a point to be transferred. But with LucyPhone and Fonolo, the user is in control. The user dictates the interaction on his or her terms.

VHT, LucyPhone, and Fonolo all aim to improve the customer service experience, but there is clearly a distinction. I believe it is this: Is the solution right in front of the user? If not then I’m afraid it’s part of the problem, especially in a today’s world where user experience is being transformed.

Fonolo has been on this blog’s radar a few times and recently CEO Shai Berger announced a new website and a televised appearance on “The Pitch” on Canada’s Business News Network (BNN).

The story of Fonolo is an interesting one, starting from its humble birthplace — Canada. Now how many startups do you know from Canada? Nothing against our northern neighbors, but Canada isn’t really famous for being a startup cradle. (Just read what TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington had to say about it…) Personally I am thrilled to see a Canadian company like Fonolo making news and giving its pitch for new funding to expand operations.

It’s a tough economic environment, but what better time to go for the kill.

After stealing the hearts of smartphone users who hate IVR menus, Fonolo will attempt to wow enterprises with its software-as-a-service (Saas) solution. The website redesign clearly focuses on enticing business decision makers. Virtual queuing, pre-call questions, post-call surveys, and zero integration — these are terms that I’ve heard over and over again in my contact center projects. I’ve been in the industry for over ten years, and I am still hearing about these things! So yes, there’s definitely room for disruption and innovation…

The business strategy paid off as Berger talked about a deal with a major Canadian bank. According to Berger in the video, more are in the sales pipeline, and that’s why the company also recently hired a sales executive from IBM.

I see a trend favoring services like Fonolo. Smartphone sales are rising. Text and data usage are skyrocketing. We’re spending less and less time talking on the phone. When you pick up your BlackBerry, iPhone, or Android, you’re more than likely using SMS, checking email, or interacting with an app. Fonolo, in a sense, turns that God forsaken IVR into an app which you can tap, tap, tap on your smartphone or browser.

Consumers easily understand the value Fonolo provides. There will be challenges to sell this to the enterprise, however. Companies usually stick with their telecom vendors or partners when implementing self-service IVRs. In fact, some telecom vendors will heavily discount the IVR (and maybe some basic apps) after selling a PBX solution (VOIP, of course). Companies are wary to bring in another vendor to navigate the often-complex IVR/contact center projects, even if it’s “zero integration.”

What’s glaringly missing on Fonolo’s website is a list of partners. The telecom industry is tough to crack. It’s not just the traditional Big Telecom (Avaya/Nortel, Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, etc.) anymore. It’s also the software companies (Microsoft, Aspect, etc.), networking companies (Cisco), and even cloud companies (Google). Throw in services companies (IBM, HP, etc.) into the mix, too.

To me Fonolo does represent a disruptive technology. But to be really disruptive in the industry, Fonolo may need to make some big new friends, real fast. Big companies like to meet with big vendors to spend big money. If it’s big customers and short sales cycles that Fonolo’s after, then it only makes sense to buddy up with a partner with much greater resources.

Fonolo CEO Shai Berger was kind enough to take time from his vacation (and baby duty) to discuss in more detail about his company and its products. I’d written about Fonolo previously when its iPhone app appeared on the scene to great fanfare. The Toronto-based startup of less than 10 employees has won numerous awards and recognition, and are more than ready to roll out its Fonolo for Business enterprise product.

“Disruptive” was the word chosen by Berger to describe its product. According to Berger, Fonolo is in the middle of a pilot project for a major bank in North America. He couldn’t reveal the name of this customer, but I thought to myself, kudos to the executive(s) who realized the benefit of this technology and more importantly, realized the importance of improving the customer experience using it.

Because that is ultimately what Fonolo aims to do. For customers, allowing them to reach a company’s service representative easily, away from the tired voice interface. For enterprises, allowing them to leverage existing contact center infrastructure but provide an additional channel of customer interaction. Judging from the iTunes Store feedback, the app is commonly misunderstood. Some users have complained about having to set up an account and/or enter a phone number in order to use the service. With some input from Berger, let me see if I can explain it somewhat properly…

Fonolo for Consumers not just navigates an IVR menu for you (its “Deep Dialing” technology), it also allows you to make notes, bookmarks, and save call history. That’s why a user has to set up an account. Those are also unique features of Fonolo compared to other competing offerings which simply push out DTMF tones to get you to someone.

Yes, someone. This may not be the right person because as we know, businesses change and therefore, IVR menus also change. But Fonolo solves this problem and improves its effectiveness by regularly calling company IVRs and updating their menu mappings stored in its database. It’s much more than a DTMF generator. Berger attributed this important distinguishing feature to its home-grown “call engine,” complete with its own SIP stack and RTP library (for you techies craving TLAs).

In terms of implementation, it doesn’t take more than a Web widget embedded on the company site. There’s more good news: absolutely nothing has to be changed to the existing infrastructure. The PBX is left alone, the IVR remains untouched, and the CTI system requires no tweaks. Calls continue to arrive to the agents — screen-pops and all. IVR menu changes? Just update the widget. In a study done and published by Berger and his team, between 30-50% of contact center calls result from mis-navigation (e.g. zero-outs, vague verbiage, long menus, etc.) which cost lots of money. By presenting a visual interface Fonolo cuts down on mis-navigation and could save a company a big chunk of cash. Happy callers? How about happy contact center managers, too.

Now you may think, as I have, “Why not just implement an email routing application?” In fact, many modern contact center software have that capability. Faxes, emails, and even tweets are now being routed along with voice interactions. Email is good for a number of things, but not in dealing with customer service. Otherwise, why aren’t IVRs extinct yet in the midst of email ubiquity? Additionally, Berger pointed out that most contact centers rarely deploy both voice and email routing together; and if voice service is deployed first, they don’t normally add email routing later because of cost and technical complexities. Customers still prefer speaking to a live person, so perhaps email routing is more effective when used as a request for agent callback.

In that aspect I believe the main competitors to Fonolo aren’t other “dialing” apps, but rather products that offer “live chat” capability on a company site.

But Fonolo also has an edge in its smartphone apps. Between sending an email then waiting on a response or not being in front of a PC to initiate live chat, and actually getting to an agent via a quick tap or click on the mobile phone — which would you prefer?

Consumers will find Fonolo an app that solves a common frustration in dealing with companies. And with that, enterprises should take an honest look at themselves to see if they are doing their best to provide the most efficient method of customer service in today’s Web-centric world. Fonolo can be the bridge to that gap.

Does your organization have an IVR, running a self-service application that maybe you’re very proud of? Well, it’s time for you to rethink your IVR strategy because IVR hatred has really gone mainstream with the release of Fonolo for iPhone. The app is free. And it has won awards.

According to Fonolo, here’s how the app can help you:

Tired of pressing 1 for this and 2 for that? We’ve mapped out the phone menus for hundreds of companies. Find the spot you need to call, then tap, and we’ll automatically connect you. Fonolo also organizes your history with each company, allowing you to save notes and listen to call recordings.

Do you call the same company and navigate to the same point over and over again? Bookmark that spot with Fonolo and next time you can easily repeat that call with a single tap. Your call history, notes and bookmarks can also be accessed via our website at fonolo.com.

Pretty neat application, especially the web integration. It’s almost like del.icio.us for IVRs.