May 19, 2010 — New Phone Service for SMBs to Turn Telephone Calls into Profits
By Carolyn J Dawson for TMCnet.com
FonGenie is a cloud-computing service that offers the merchants and small businesses a virtual telephone platform and business intelligence tools, announced it has upgraded from the private beta version after numerous months of end-user testing.
The company helps business owners to up-sell products and services to callers while gaining insights on customer calling behaviors.
According to James Im, founder and CEO of FonGenie, “I am so confident that FonGenie can make a difference to a small business’ bottom line that I’m putting my money where my mouth is. Just try FonGenie for 30 days – it is simple to setup and easy to use – and you’ll realize its benefits immediately from increased sales to cost savings. If it doesn’t, I’ll reimburse them for their time.”
May 18, 2010 — FonGenie: Our phone automation service will boost your small business sales, or we’ll give you $500
By Andrew Nusca for ZDNet
A new cloud computing company says it will give you $500 if its new service doesn’t boost the sales of your small business.
The service — and Mountain View, Calif.-based startup — is named FonGenie, and it’s designed to pick off low-hanging fruit, such as calls asking for your hours, location or current specials.
The Voice 2.0 service went public on Monday after months of private beta testing.
Here’s how it works: A web interface allows you to manage greetings and menus heard by callers, with room to allow daily promotions or discounts.
(According to the company’s own research, up to 35 percent of callers introduced to daily specials on the phone accepted the offer, resulting in a more than 25 percent increase in sales.)
May 15, 2010 — FonGenie: Our phone automation service will boost your small business sales, or we’ll give you $500
By Larry Lisser
“The Virtual PBX market is hot. After eight years of seeding by a handful of leading providers, the market now finds itself in a perfect storm.” — Larry Lisser
Excerpt of Larry Lisser’s article:
FonGenie: This is a newcomer, packaged as a phone service that enables sales and marketing for small businesses (particularly service providers). Under the hood, it shares some similarities to a conventional VPBX, but its feature set and messaging focus on things like screen pop, automated caller interaction and CRM management. Good one to watch.
There are many more of course, like Phone.com that offers VPBX services but doubles as a home phone service – figuring the work place, the mobile and home phones flow into one another anyway. They also leans on a creative affiliate program, among other things, to drive growth.
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.
