Fonolo Addresses A Real Headache

San Francisco: I personally find the phone interface for dealing with company’s customer support, billing, or sales operations as one of the greatest ills of modern civilization.

Fonolo formerly Foncloud, offers an end run around this headache: a good example of a highly focused solution to a serious pain point, perhaps?

[via email]

Fonolo’s “Deep Dialing” feature enables a caller to skip time-consuming touch-tone and IVR-driven menus and connect directly to a point inside a phone menu to reach the person or department he needs.



The process is simple. A user starts by finding the company he needs on the Fonolo Web site, then visually scans through the phone menu and clicks on the appropriate point. Fonolo will then dial the company, navigate the phone system and call the user’s phone. When the user answers, he will be connected to the desired point in the menu. Furthermore, the user can bookmark this point inside the menu so that in the future, it is only a click away. With Fonolo, users can navigate the call-path options visually, on a computer or mobile device, then click to be connected directly, rather than plodding through the menus step-by-step.



“No one should ever have to navigate a phone menu twice again,” [Founder and CEO Shai] Berger said. “We’re building Deep Dialing to respond to the growing frustration of navigating increasingly complex phone menus.

I love the term deep dialing. I personally would just like the ability to get to the magic word that leads to a person.