“Like many small businesses, yours may not have a dedicated receptionist to answer calls. An automated phone system could help your staff save time and increase efficiency.”

Thank you NFIB for the mention. Read the whole NFIB .com article online here, and please leave your comments.

If you’re a Twitter.com user please follow us for the latest updates on our ever-growing service and how other businesses are applying FonGenie to improve their sales and efficiencies.

FonGenie has launched its newly designed website to give business owners a clear message on how retail and small business owners can increase revenue and decrease cost by leveraging technology. We have also added a number of additional testimonials from multiple business owners, who have been able to use FonGenie to increase or optimize their revenue from a simple inbound telephone call. Many thanks to those who have helped us build these success stories and the business owners of MyCollege Storage and AquaSpa for their contribution.

 
The new FonGenie website look and feel
FonGenie has a new look and feel. We’ve received tons of input from our current users and visitors to the site since officially launching the service on June 2010. Due to limited marketing and product management efforts (we are a small start-up), certain visitors to FonGenie.com had an impression that FonGenie was nothing more than an automated attendant system. Simply put, we have not done a great job of explaining how FonGenie can be used to help small business owners.

It is important to show visitors that FonGenie can greet callers, automate calls, answer their questions and route calls to a person’s telephone or location; but when optimally configured and used it becomes a powerful productivity tool and an enhancement to everyday sales and marketing efforts. FonGenie gives the business owner the power to know who their callers are, where they are from, when and how often they call, and what they want all in real time. The real-time Live Caller ID with CRM (Customer Relationship Management) displays this information to them before the caller even rings their phone.

 
FonGenie enters limited/private market trial with the FonGenie appliance
Our new website also introduces a new feature that has just entered a limited Market Trial. This is a hardware appliance that will connect the FonGenie service with a standard telephone.

Our FonGenie appliance gives the business a stand-alone phone system that allows you to save money by eliminating your business telephone service (also can be used to enhance a current landline service). The appliance is plug-and-play simple to a broadband internet connection that includes 2 lines; one of which is an “always on” telephone from which you can make cost saving outbound telephone calls and which also works with fax machines and credit card terminals.

More information about participating on this marketing trial can be found by going to our Pricing and Plans page and clicking the FonGenie appliance link.

 
The FonGenie demo and sandbox application
A brand-new feature we added to the FonGenie website that will be of interest to new visitors is the FonGenie sandbox. This new feature, found by clicking the “Demo & Trial” button, allows visitors to actually interact with the FonGenie greeting and menus. They will be able to write their own greetings, make new menus, and immediately hear what callers would hear. As users play with this new feature they can even call in as their customers would do to their business to bring it all into a useful perspective.

We still offer the sales calculator in our “Demo & Trial” section so visitors are able to get an idea how their business sales would improve by actively using the FonGenie service.

Join FonGenie in supporting all the various retail and small businesses, whether a local restaurant, bike shop crafts store or spa, during “Small Business Saturday” and onward. And if you own a retail or small business, look to FonGenie to help you increase your revenue, decrease your costs all while improving your customer satisfaction.

 
Remember, with FonGenie it’s not just about saving you money, but about you making money.

Contact a FonGenie representative if you have any questions about the FonGenie service or how it can improve your small business success.

“When Connected Planet recently asked me to write a two-part series about cloud-based services, the most difficult part was to narrow down the topic. In the end, I focused the first piece on cloud-based unified communications and the second piece on cloud-based security. Both stories focused on specialty service providers (many of them start-ups) that have all taken a bit of a different approach to the market.”

“The cloud-service market reminds me a lot of the early days of packaged software for personal computers, when a slew of start-up companies developed programs that could handle all sorts of specialized tasks, from creating floor plans to managing a stock portfolio. Many of those companies were eventually acquired by larger players, which merged multiple programs into a comprehensive software suite. Before long I expect we’ll see a similar pattern in the cloud services market.”

Read this connectedplanetonline.com.com article online, and please leave your comments.

FonGenie is an online service that serves as an online receptionist for your retail or small business. It lets business owners customize how phone calls are answered with greetings and menus. The company is so confident in its ability to increase your business’ sales that if it fails to deliver, it will pay you $500 in cash or an Amex gift certificate.

FonGenie let’s you add daily specials, offers, incentives, and discounts to your customized greetings to encourage callers to purchase products or services. According to the company, 35 percent of callers introduced to daily specials when calling a business using FonGenie have accepted an offer.

The service includes Caller ID 2.0 which gives real-time analytics on incoming calls such as who is calling and their specific call history and behavior. It also has a built-in CRM tool that allows custom tagging, appointment management and note taking to profile callers and identify important customers when they call again.

Read this PCMag.com article online, and please leave your comments.

The FonGenie telephony platform lets businesses script their own menu tree and capture caller information, all with no new investment in infrastructure.

Subscribing businesses use a Web interface to script greetings and set up menu options. The greeting can include an additional announcement about current specials or promotions.

After that, the caller hears a standard voicemail menu with whatever choices the business sets up — hours and location, ring through to specific people or departments, and so on. Customers can use an existing phone number or set up a new one supplied by FonGenie.

The service also offers CRM features, such as information about the caller, what messages they’ve heard, when they last called, and any notes from previous conversations, all of which are displayed to the call recipient before they answer.

The business can also access business intelligence about their call activity, such as how many calls come in each day, where they originate, and so on.

The service is only available in the U.S. so far. Pricing ranges from US$29.99 to $149.99 per month, depending on call volume, CRM and BI features included, and so on.

Read this iTWire article online, and please leave your comments.