Article
• November 3, 2009
Call Back the Callers You Lost While On Hold
Phonebot offers free call-back solutions for the call center
Automated corporate phone menus are one of the most annoying aspects of modern life (behind taxes and Thanksgiving travel).
Add a dose of sanity to the dreaded customer service call with Fonolo, a free web service that allows you to skip robotic menus and quickly reach a person (all thanks to the magic of the Internet).
Fonolo provides visual maps of the phone trees of more than 500 North American companies. You pick the one you want to call and then click on your desired point of entry in the schematic—“report a stolen credit card,” say. Their computers do the rest, calling your phone once a human is on the line.
No shouting “agent!!” repeatedly at a machine or wading through the netherworld of menu Hell.
Fonolo refers to this as “Deep Dialing.” We call it civilized.
To test the service we chose a wireless provider, an insurance carrier, a credit card company and a major airline, and each time we connected with a living, breathing customer service rep in under 35 seconds.
Fonolo also allows you to record conversations in MP3 form, in case you ever want to, you know, hold a public company accountable for something it said. And there’s a handy function that turns frequently requested strings of information (account IDs, frequent flyer numbers, PINS) into secure one-button “quick tones.”
Now if Fonolo could just do away with 1040 forms and overcrowded holiday flights…
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