On February 9, when Fonolo launched a free app for the iPhone it raised the visibility of all efforts to shorten the time it takes to get things done through phone-based self-service. Fonolo is over three years old now. It has invested a tremendous amount of resources into calling toll-free numbers in order to map the IVR menus of hundreds of often-called companies. Its Web service enables registered users to select the exact point where they want to join in the customer care conversation. For many, it is where they will be put in direct touch with a live agent who will understand the exact nature of a call.

This “Tap for an Agent” function is now extended to iPhone users, who start by selecting the companies they want to call, scroll through a visual presentation of the menu tree, tap their screens to designate a point-of-entry and then carry out their normal activities until fonolo puts them in touch with the customer service agent. It’s not necessarily a time-saver. For instance, callers seeking United Airlines agents at the height of so-called “Snowmageddon” and its unavoidable flight delays and cancellations were told that wait times for an agent were over an hour.

Like Lucyphone and Virtual Hold, Fonolo frees people from spending time off-hook while waiting to talk with a live person. Yet all three are treating the symptoms of a broken customer care infrastructure, not the root causes. This is an age when Google, which is most commonly thought of as a “search” company, is moving fast and furiously to add new services by launching the social features of “Buzz”, announcing a new Fiber-to-the-Home initiative, purchasing Aardvark.com and underwriting free WiFi in the The Dalles, OR, where it has built its uber-data center (thanks to a long-term contract with the municipally owned power company)… all in quick succession.

Google, for one, recognizes that “points of contact” span search, email, phone calls, social sites and all manner of activity. A call to a contact center comes near the end of a succession of interactions with friends, influencers, serendipitous information sources and other components of a global decision engine. Contacting a live agent is the culminating act aimed to bring closure to a trouble report or the effort to by a new product or service. Fonolo’s app takes some of the pain and discomfort out of reaching the ultimate goal (to talk to a live agent), but Google (and a small list of large X-as-a-Service companies who aim to compete with Google) are in the position to understand the context of each call, anticipate its purpose and ultimately provide better service.

With an understanding that the real goal is to re-tool and re-invent the whole customer-vendor relationship, we can recognize that the problem spans mobile, social, search, ecommerce and ultimately “cloud computing.” Fonolo’s “Tap for an Agent” is a neat trick and deserves recognition as a solution to the hold-time dilemma that leads customers to conclude that their time, ultimately, is not important to a business.

Yet, in the larger picture, 2010 feels like the year during which technologies are put into practice that do more than overcome such speed-bumps and daily annoyances to bring the full potential of Web services, identity management and robust telephony to put more power in the hands or, more accurately, handsets of customers as they rely on a very dynamic mix of of phones, computers and face-to-face interactions to out their daily commerce.

[By the Way: Voxeo’s Dan York and I will be discussing findings from our recent survey of the attitudes and usage patterns surrounding this sort of “multichannel customer care” in a live Webcast, Thursday, February 18th, 1 p.m. EST/10 a.m. PST. Click this link to learn more and register for the event.]

Categories: Articles

Tags: Recombinant Communications, mobile services, customer care, iPhone