Top Five: Home Office Gadgets – “Your Business” (MSNBC)
FonGenie experienced a spike of attention in FonGenie signups following a mention on MSNBC’s Your Business (Sunday, March 7, 2010 at 7:30 AM ET). This television spot highlighted, “Top Five: Home Office Gadgets” that were earlier written up in an Inc Magazine article (January 13, 2010). (see our blog post here)
Although the spot didn’t delve into the heart of FonGenie, the improvement of your product and service sales or the powerful analytics that is produced by every phone call to your business, we really appreciate that MSNBC brought FonGenie to the attention of more small to medium size sales and service related businesses that are looking for this solution to improve their bottom line.
“Advances in technologies are allowing entrepreneurs to run their companies in the comfort of their very own homes. Here are five handy home office gadgets courtesy of Inc.com.”
FonGenie was included as one of ten “tools that any size business can use to build out a Fortune 500 back office.” This was in Focus.com: Focus Brief (February, 12, 2010).
Scott Albro, the author of the article, Replicating the F500 Back Office: 10 Things Every Small Business Should Buy (F500 Handbook), is the founder and CEO of Focus and has been a contributor to the growth of several successful Silicon Valley start ups. Focus.com is a resource for business professionals who need high quality research and access to a community of experts.
We appreciate the inclusion in such great company. Mr Albro writes, “Even advanced call center automation is now available to businesses of all sizes with services like FonGenie.”
Please read the entire article/analysis here:
January 13, 2010 — Essential Home Office Tools
FonGenie was one of 10 featured tools (Essential Home Office Tools) in Inc. Magazine’s online Start-Up section. “Here’s a look at 10 gadgets that every home-based entrepreneur should keep within reach.” Though we see ourselves as more than a “Phone Answering System” have a look at what they are saying.
FonGenie Phone Answering System
“Think of FonGenie as a more sophisticated version of Google Voice. Working as an automated service that lets you manage your company’s phone-answering system online, FonGenie enables users to customize phone menu options, and analyze phone traffic. Plus, you can choose between two text-to-speech voices to create messages that provide general business information, answer frequently asked questions, and advertise promotions. After a 60-day free trial, the service costs $30 for 300 minutes, or $150 per month for an unlimited plan.”
Inc Magazine – Switchboard in a Bottle “A new automated phone answering system for businesses”
Inc Magazine
By Mark Spoonauer | Dec 1, 2009
Switchboard in a Bottle
A new automated phone answering system for businesses
“A more sophisticated version of Google Voice, FonGenie (www.FonGenie.com) is an automated service that lets you manage your company’s phone-answering system online. Users can customize phone menu options and choose between two text-to-speech voices to create messages that provide general business information, answer frequently asked questions, and advertise promotions. FonGenie analyzes phone traffic and provides Web-based reports so you can update your system accordingly. After a 60-day free trial, the service costs $30 for 300 minutes or $150 per month for an unlimited plan.”
Read this Inc Magazine article online, or pick up a copy of Inc Magazine (December 2009/January 2010, page 50) at your local newsstand today to read about FonGenie and how it can help your business.
BNet.com hosted an article about FonGenie (“FonGenie™ Launches to Help Small Businesses Boost Sales and Profits” — August 12, 2009) listed under their Business Services Industry section and was apparently pulled off Business Wire. It was brought to my attention by one of our new users because the article elevated FonGenie as being powerful yet very simple to use. This dubious user found its claims to be surprisingly true in his experience with the FonGenie service, though he had yet fully optimized FonGenie for sales but was ramping up in that area.
The article opened, “New Offering Features User-Friendly Services Designed to Help Business Owners Close Sales Quicker, Build Business, Boost Revenue and Gain Operations Efficiencies.” Although these assertions can only be realized when FonGenie is integrated and optimized into the business properly the ease and value of FonGenie can be seen as soon as the account is enabled.
Online article from VoIPGuide4U: Free Automated Phone Answering Service For Small Business
VoIPGuide4U released a short article about FonGenie (Free Automated Phone Answering Service For Small Business) in their Friday (August 28, 2009) blog which encompasses some general ideas about FonGenie. Most notable, “Would you expense your costly call center employees on such calls? Probably not a good idea,” really brings the point that many businesses, both retail and service, can find up to 30% of their inbound call traffic is specifically questions regarding the business location, hours, or promotions; tasks even most callers prefer to have some level of elective automation. These calls generally take the business representative off task and are not productive by responding in this manner. FonGenie is the answer to this problem.
This is one of many reasons FonGenie is the answer for small retail and service businesses in the United States right now. The more notable is that FonGenie is designed to be an automated sales tool, even though many small businesses find a value in FonGenie as an automated receptionist. You will find that FonGenie is unique. To see what FonGenie can do for you visit FonGenie.com.
The Business Opportunities Weblog Network is a resource website at has been hosting business opportunities and ideas to inspire new businesses since 2001. As FonGenie’s primary target market is small retail and service oriented businesses we appreciate the article posted by Jaclyn Wells (Create Sales from Customer Calls; August 24, 2000).
Jaclyn writes this article based on a different perspective from the article about FonGenie that appeared in Small Business Technology (Turning Customer Calls into a Revenue Engine and Productivity Booster, August 19, 2009). Though Jaclyn’s article doesn’t really get very deep into how FonGenie improves small business sales it does say, “you could better direct your callers and in the end, not only to keep their business but possibly sell them an upgrade or a whole other product to make their life easier,” which gives the gist of FonGenie as a sales tool.
SmallBizTechnology.com’s article about FonGenie (Turning Customer Calls Into A Revenue Engine and Productivity Booster, August 19, 2009) really did a great job summing up what FonGenie offers the small and new business. They pointed out, “The wow feature about FonGenie is that since it’s so simple to update (even via cell phone text message, for example) FonGenie encourages you to have a “daily” special (or hourly special) as a menu button on your phone,” which is exactly what we want our future users to know. We are not a virtual receptionist but an automated sales tool.
Thank you for helping express that.
Article Reprint:
Turning Customer Calls Into A Revenue Engine and Productivity Booster
Aug. 19, 2009.
Turning Customer Calls Into A Revenue Engine and Productivity Booster
Think about how busy your business gets during the course of the day.
DailyVista.com article: FonGenie targets small biz customers with phone messaging platform
DailyVista.com is an online blog that “connects corporate executives in the marketing and advertising industry.” Their teams scour news sources for news of interest to the marketing and advertising world with an emphasis on presenting it in an understandable way.
On August 13, 2009 DailyVista.com feature our own FonGenie service in an article entitled “FonGenie targets small biz customers with phone messaging platform.” We would like to thank DailyVista.com for their insightful article about our exciting service. The article did a good job pointing out that FonGenie is “a user-friendly service that allows retailers to increase revenue while reducing costs to further grow their businesses.” They also emphasized the strong analytics, which has been proven to assist small business owners succeed in this difficult economy.
Article:
FonGenie targets small biz customers with phone messaging platform
Aug. 13, 2009 | DailyVista.com
FonGenie targets small biz customers with phone messaging platform
VoIP Guides didn’t really go into too much depth about the sales potential for small businesses by using FonGenie services. Of course being a VoIP industry blog VoIP Guides emphasizes FonGenie as being an “Automated Phone answering service” which really sells FonGenie short.
The strength of FonGenie is in its ability to assist small businesses improve their sales first and foremost. Secondly, FonGenie tracks and analyzes the behavior of the businesses’ inbound callers. FonGenie was developed as an automated sales tool which uses a virtual attendant on the front end. As a sales tool FonGenie is quickly showing promise and value to current beta users at this time.
Article:
Free Automated Phone answering service for small businesses
Aug. 11, 2009 | VoIP Guides
Free Automated Phone answering service for small businesses
