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.

Thank you for helping express that.

Turning Customer Calls Into A Revenue Engine and Productivity Booster

Think about how busy your business gets during the course of the day.

Think about how much the phone rings. Customers are calling for your hours of operation, directions and other things that you repeat several times a day.

Think of all the work you are not getting done due to you and your staff having to answer the phone.

Think about the opportunities you just might be missing due to NOT answering the phone.

Telephones are a necessary evil. Even though email is hugely popular, as we all know, telephones are still an important communication tool. Remember, not everyone can (or thinks to) look at a web site for information. Not everyone can find the information they need even when they do first look online. Sometimes a phone call is what is best.

I was recently looking at a very innovative service from FonGenie which can help turn every phone call into a possibly revenue generating call!

FonGenie provides an “interactive response” system for incoming callers. What’s neat about it is that it’s all web based and you can program the system by typing. No need to record the voice prompts. FonGenie reads what you type, so you don’t have to record it with your voice. If you’re customers are used to a natural, human voice, they’ll have to adjust to the mechanical nature of FonGenie’s computer generated voice.

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, in addition to prompts for your address, hours of operation and other information that might be easily answered through a phone menu.

Using FonGenie’s call analysis you can then know what voice prompts were most popular and dynamically program your voice prompts and more importantly your “specials” accordingly and immediately.

According to FonGenie’s web site, FonGenie does not replace contact with your customer business calls – it enhances it. With FonGenie you are able to give information to your customers prior to speaking with a representative. (Our statistics show that many callers are first choosing to hear about “specials” and “incentives” prior to choosing to be transferred to an agent.) It has been proven that an informed customer is more likely to buy.

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.

Free Automated Phone answering service for small businesses

Most small business switched to VOIP, mostly hosted VOIP services to save money. Today, you might find another great way to cut cost with free phone answering services and save money/resources on call center.

If you are running a retail or services business, you might be getting 30% calls each day asking about your store/office location address, directions to your store or your current promotions? Would you expense your costly call center employees on such calls? Probably not a good idea. How about your setup a phone answering service which handles this type of calls with preconfigured messages.

Most phone answering system obviously comes at a cost however, there is one Free Automated Phone answering service called FonGenie. Fongenie lets you setup a phone answering service for your business for FREE (It will be free for limited time).

You have to understand that Fongenie is in early beta and obviously not 100% perfect. But hey its free and it workable for your small business. You can register and then secure a new phone number for incoming calls and enter the phone number for your store/office location. You can offer your office/store hours and closing days. This should setup a workflow to trigger a voicemail instead of actually ringing a call center number.

Most importantly you can improve sales by putting prompts for promotions, discounts which could improve your sales number significantly. On top of that, you can track data through fongenie interface to know how many people called and what they did through the prompts. This should give you some ROI on investments and overall cost effectiveness of using Fongenie.

Fongenie is currently free but soon will be paid service. Monthly plans will cost about $30 for a certain number of incoming calls. Unlimited plans will cost about $150-250 each month depending on the size of the business.

If there was one thing we would like anyone interested in FonGenie to know is that FonGenie answers your business phones only as a means to help your business sell and promote your products and services. We are primarily a sales tool. This article appears in PCWorld’s “The Cost Cutter” section with the tag, “Using technology to save money for your business.” Our goal is not to just save you money, but to make you money.

Zack writes, “FonGenie representatives are especially excited about using voice prompts to advertise specials, claiming that businesses have already seen improved sales with this option,” and he is totally correct. FonGenie will help you sell and we have seen this with our users.

If you are new to FonGenie visit our site (FonGenie.com) and watch the “How it Works” videos. You can be up and running with a FonGenie account and set-up in minutes, and with a simple forward on your business telephone FonGenie can start improving your business today.

Zack’s article also appears in the following online magazines:

• The Washington Post article
• Network World article
• IDG article
• InfoWorld article
• The Industry Standard article

Phone Answering Service Pays Back in Time

Small retail- or service-based businesses often spend time–or money–fielding mundane phone calls. Where is the store? How do I get there? When does it close? Are there any current promotions? If this sounds familiar, you might already have callers reach an answering machine that rattles off these details. But customers might waste time waiting for the end of the message for the information they want.

FonGenie, a simple, automated phone answering service fixes these problems and even arms businesses with details about calls. Customers hear messages that you can easily change, quickly navigating menus to get information they need. Your phone will ring only if they want more assistance.

FonGenie is currently in a preview phase, and while I found a few rough edges when I poked around, small businesses could already find it worthwhile. You’ll sign up for free, secure a new phone number for incoming calls, and enter the phone number for your store location.

Further settings configure your store hours and what should happen if someone calls when you’re closed. For example, a specific greeting could say when you’ll open again and then send the call to voicemail, never ringing your actual phone.

The prompt system uses two fairly good text-to-speech voices, making it easy to reprogram greetings through the website. You just type in new messages. The voices occasionally sound robotic, and you can’t record new prompts manually. (FonGenie is considering an option for you to upload your own recordings, but that would defeat some of the service’s nimbleness.) But I didn’t mind listening to quick menus with these voices. Listen to these samples (male / female).

FonGenie representatives are especially excited about using voice prompts to advertise specials, claiming that businesses have already seen improved sales with this option. Analytical tools could help you determine if sales change and otherwise improve your services, since FonGenie stores data on each call.

For example, you could track how often people call for the store hours just after closing and determine if you should hold the business open later at night. This data gets neatly graphed in the FonGenie site, but the company plans to add export options, too.

FonGenie is currently free but will be entering a paid period. A company representative said that the shift should begin this week, although you’ll still get a 60-day trial. Monthly plans will cost about $30 for a certain number of incoming calls, to be determined. Unlimited plans will cost about $150-250 each month depending on the size of the business.

If your company wastes time fielding simple calls, give FonGenie a closer look. Even after it shifts to a monthly fee, you might make more back in the long term.

Zack Stern is building a new business from San Francisco, where he frequently contributes to PC World.

As our current users already know, FonGenie doesn’t just answer your business phones but we help you to analyze your caller interests and needs. With this insight users are able to directly improve sales to their customers.

In regards to their final question, “How much does it cost?” and “Are there different plans for you to choose from?” we haven’t set the price of the service when it comes out of the Free beta period. It will definitely be competitively priced against the closest related services and there will most likely be a 3 tier pricing model.

Read the whole article below, or visit the KillerStartups.com site. If you are new to FonGenie visit our site (FonGenie.com) and watch the “How it Works” videos. You can be up and running with a FonGenie account and set-up in minutes, and with a simple forward on your business telephone FonGenie can start improving your business today.

Headquartered in California, this company specializes in communication technology and it has created a utility that aims to make for smoother communication among small businesses and their punters.

What it does is answering the phone for you, greeting callers and interacting with them by giving answers to the most recurrent and common questions that can be put your company’s way.

As the team behind it explains, FonGenie does not substitute human interaction but rather enhance the experience for every single individual who is involved within the process. It provides the user with a sort of data mining engine that keeps track of different aspects of the telephone traffic by way of charts and reports that highlight information like caller’s behavior, engagement for each call and the items that have been listened to the most. It is also capable of monitoring the frequency of calls from any given customer.

The ultimate aim of the site is to turn analytic reporting into a more proactive and organic task, and let anybody shorten the distance that separates data collation and its actual assessment. It also intends to bring together the telephone and social media, and as such it is worth a definitive look if you are weighing up how to bolster the standing of your business.

In their own words
“FonGenie answers the phone at your retail and small business. It will greet callers, interact with them by giving them answers to frequently asked questions, and best of all it will position and up-sell your products and services. We do not replace the human interaction, but enhance the experience for both customers and yourself.

Advanced analytics built from the ground up with retail and small business owners in mind give you a data mining engine that continually monitors every aspect of the telephone traffic. Your callers’ behavior is automatically highlighted with the most important information for business owners and managers to act upon. It is filled with charts and reports showing the number of calls during a time-frame, engagements for each calls, most listened specials or menus, frequency of calls from a customer and much more. The main goal is to make analytics reporting proactive and shorten the time between aggregating and analyzing data, drawing conclusions and taking actions based on the collective intelligence.”

Why it might be a killer
It has the potential for letting businesses give customers a better service and measure every single aspect of its efficacy.

Some questions
How much does it cost? Are there different plans for you to choose from?