This is pretty slick: Fonolo, a young company out of Canada, has released a version of its IVR-navigation tool for the iPhone, and this blog by Shai Berger, Fonolo's co-founder and CEO, does a very effective job of walking you through the iPhone app to show why it's so cool.Fonolo started out in 2007 with technology that maps phone (i.e., IVR) menus; the company claims to have built up a database of IVR maps for 500 North American enterprises. This led to creation of a Web-based service that gives consumers access to these maps on a visual basis. The idea is that you can avoid the frustration of slowly, methodically navigating through voice IVR menus, and quickly use a visual representation to get to where you want to go more easily. The company subsequently turned the technology around, so to speak, and released a software solution it sells to enterprises, so the enterprise can offer this visual option to its customers, instead of the customer needing the Fonolo Web service.
Shai Berger's blog post takes you through the new iPhone app, along the way demonstrating some of the cool things Fonolo can do: You can essentially "bookmark" a particular level of an enterprise's IVR menu--if you're always calling customer service or reservations or whatever, you can make that your one-click call to the company--no need to navigate through an audio IVR you know by heart from calling it so many times.
That's something everyone can relate to. In our office (as in many, I suspect), it's the internal conference bridge; for the weekly team VoiceCon call, Crystal or Jon or whoever's dialing in can usually fly through the keypad entries before the audio command is able to get more than a syllable or two out. That may make it seem like this isn't so bad, but I think there's a level of eye-rolling that goes on anytime humans are asked to do a repetitive process they know by heart, when they know there has to be an easier way.
Shai Berger called his blog post "Tapping your way past phone menus," which is where I got the title for my blog post. Of course, I'm overstating it--we're not going to be playing taps over the traditional IVR--but this is one of those applications that just makes sense. Especially for those who do a lot of their IVR calling from the road--checking on flights, rental cars, hotels, etc.--the iPhone app makes particular sense.
It's interesting: We're talking about adding voice to so many applications, yet IVRs are a case where it'd be great to remove voice from at least a significant portion of the process. Voice isn't always the answer; figuring out when it is the right mode of communications--that's what it's all about.
