Fonol
Fonolo
The startup lets people get around annoying phone trees by mapping them with a bot. Fonolo then shows a user all of their possible choices on its Web site. The user clicks through the tree, picks their final destination, and then enters in their own phone number. Fonolo calls them back, connecting them with their ultimate choice.
"People really dislike phone menus,'' said CEO Shai Berger. "It seems like a technology from a bygone era that we're stuck with. We thought that we must have sufficient technology to come up with a better version."
The company offers a version of its product publicly at its Web site and launched an iPhone app in September, but the problem with a consumer-facing site is not everyone is going to remember to visit Fonolo every time they have a problem with a product or their bank. So the company plans to earn revenue through partnering with companies who want to improve their customer service lines. Companies will pay for the amount of phone time they use through Fonolo, Berger said.
The product will cut down on wait times, which irritate customers, and make call centers more efficient by preventing people from being sent to the wrong agent. Berger said Fonolo will also ask customers for their account information ahead of time, so agents won't have to spend time on that.
Fonolo has extra features such as call recording and note-taking so you can keep track of what was discussed. So far, Fonolo has 500 companies indexed in its site. It could still use more. As a test, I crawled through Fonolo for the companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It had less than half of them. Berger says he adds new companies based on customer demand through Fonolo's search bar.
Fonolo has six employees and is angel funded. The company faces competition from NoPhoneTrees.com, run by San Francisco-based Bringo, and GetHuman. There's also the iPhone application Direct Line.