Ifbyphone Blog

There is a great deal of value in allowing your users the ability to contact the right people, at the right time with the right information.  One of the great benefits of social media is that it allows you to get in contact with people who you are interested in.  I can go to Facebook and keep up with the lives of former classmates, current friends and even business associates.  I can go to Twitter and participate in conversations as disparate as SEO, fatherhood or the stunning sweep of the Cubs by the first place White Sox this past weekend.  There are a great deal of other social media sites that have found niches in keeping people connected.

Generally speaking, most of the communication that these sites facilitate is electronic.  Email, posting on message boards or walls, instant messaging.  For many types of conversations, those forms of communications work really well.  But there are certain conversations that do not lend themselves to email or IM or board posts.  There are certain conversations that really require a direct human-to-human call.

One of our partners is JumpForward, a social media site that specializes (among other things) in assisting athletes to get in contact with colleges that may be interested in recruiting them. Last week we announced the partnership, check out this video:

JumpForward is using our technology to allow athletes and coaches work together more effectively.  If you are involved in organized athletics of any kind, I’d highly recommend you spend a few minutes on thier site.

Without getting *too* philosophical, I think JumpForward is really at the cutting edge of communications.  It’s nice that I can go to my Facebook page and see that a friend loves WallE or hates the new ColdPlay album.  But I think there is untapped potential in hooking up people who need to talk to each other at the right time, in the right way.  I think that it’s a direction we’re headed, albeit slowly.

In the mean time, we’re happy to be at the forefront with JumpForward.

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Interested?  Click here and I’ll give you an immediate call back.

“Who you gonna call?” World & Web Marketing called ifbyphone to rescue Papa Dean’s Popcorn from drowning in its own success.

The ifbyphone virtual receptionist success story was featured today in the San Antonio Express-News. Below is an excerpt:

Staglik had gone to San Antonio-based World & Web to revamp their Web site. Between the walk-in traffic and the Internet orders, Papa Dean’s suddenly was too successful.

“I called up Garth Dennis,” Staglik said, referring to World & Web’s founder. “I said, ‘We’re drowning here. What can you do for us?’.”

That same day, Dennis patched the Web site into Ifbyphone, a Skokie, Ill.-based phone applications service.

“It’s like having a virtual receptionist that is collecting information from your customers,” explained Ifbyphone CEO Irv Shapiro. “So when you get to them, you have additional information and you can handle their order more effectively.”

Staglik said the service rescued the shop’s holiday season. And it gave Papa Dean’s much more information on clients than staff could have acquired under such rush circumstances.

Read the full article
Learn About The Virtual Receptionist
Visit Papa Dean’s Popcorn
Visit World & Web Marketing

I was reading this excellent post by Paul Sweeney today. One of the things he touches on regularly is customer service. Today he mentions a couple websites I frequent: Summize and GetSatisfaction. Summize is a search tool for Twitter, and GetSatisfaction is a website that shows conversations surrounding particular companies and products.

With so many ways to publish information (Twitter, blogs, websites, Facebook, etc), it is becoming increasingly easy for consumers to let people know they’re unhappy with a company. You’ve heard the expression that word of mouth is the best advertising? How powerful is word of mouth when you can press a few keys and complain about poor customer service to hundreds of your friends on the internet? How much damage can one unhappy customer do?

This can be a little scary for companies. But it shouldn’t be. View it for what it is: an opportunity. Pay attention to your customers. You have all kinds of information about what they think about you and your competitors. Find it. Read it. But more importantly, act on it.

Call them. I recently had an experience with DirecTv, where I was close to canceling my account after being a vocal proponent for 10 years. When they found out about my unhappiness (via searching Summize), they called me. That phone call was more important than anything else they could have done. Someone with the ability to help me took a proactive step and called one of their millions of customers and had a conversation about how to make it right. Now that negative press I was giving them turned into a positive customer service experience and positive press.

As we like to say, the phone is the Rodney Dangerfield of technology. It gets no respect. But really, it’s still the most powerful and productive technology that most business have at their disposal. So use social media and the internet to find out what your customers think. But follow up by the phone. Your customers want to hear from you.

Like Cracker Jack and baseball, peanut butter and jelly, or the proverbial horse and carriage, some things just go together. Like the mobile Web and click-to-call.

When people are searching on the mobile Web, it’s a good bet they’re looking for something they want right now. So it’s just plain smart to make it easy for them to get in touch - especially for businesses like restaurants where reservations are important.

Jessica Dolcourt at Download.com has highlighted three mobile applications that incorporate click-to-call: Golf.com, Find It! For Blackberry and Zagat To Go (which has added click-to-call since Dolcourt’s post). Expect to see more smartphone and PDA applications incorporating click-to-call as the mobile Web extends its reach.

The EComm (Emerging Communications) 2008 conference is under way as of Wednesday morning and Ifbyphone, a silver sponsor, has been in the press quite a bit. Ifbyphone CEO Irv Shapiro gave a speech yesterday on the usefulness of Phone Mashups and announced Ifbyphone’s plan to give away 1 million minutes a month to developers to promote the creation of new third-party voice applications. Here are a few of the links. We’ll add to the list as more go live:

VoIP News

Information Week

Macworld

Thomas Howe Log on Ifbyphone CEO Irv Shapiro : Irv’s company, ifbyphone, looks to me like the phone mashup service provider that’s closest to getting it. His presentation was right on, his message clear, and the ifbyphone business model looks like it might be a winner. Pay attention to them.

 The VoIP Weblog

“Not only has the company made many of its stores feel like gathering places, but the bright lights and equally bright acoustics create a buzz that makes customers feel more like they are at an event than a retail store.”

You’d think the above quote, with its jazzy words and tingling appeal, is describing a movie opening in Los Angeles or a cocktail party at some music executive’s mansion. Not so. Taken from a recent New York Times article, the author is describing an Apple Store in Manhattan’s meatpacking district just after midnight. At two a.m., while most of America was asleep, the Apple Store was glowing with the cha-ching of excited holiday shoppers (or, rather, the silent whoosh of the portable credit card swipers each employee carries with him to conduct business on the spot). Apple is not the first store to deck itself out in bright lights and cool colors in the big city – Nike, Sony, and other corporate giants have succeeded with this model. But as the article so clearly displays, no one has done it with quite the panache that Apple has. By allowing customers to linger for hours, check their email, or write a book (!) Apple has not built retail stores so much as it has invented a lifestyle. In a similar way that Starbucks made the $4 cup of coffee culturally ubiquitous by adding a snappy attitude to the morning’s dull routine, Apple has reinvented the computer and technology industry with its hipster cool and simple message: Apple is easy and Apple makes you happy.

But the point is not to be missed – there’s more to it than bringing aboard a rock star interior designer and a team of twenty-somethings with a quirky taste in music. The key to Apple’s success, as much as its products, is its service. Apple makes us feel good, light on our feet, pleased to be alive. And they encourage us to spend money (which we are doing at an alarming rate) because we feel so good. The business model of exceptional service is impeccable, and it’s exactly the type of paradigm that Ifbyphone subscribes to. We’ve all dealt with poor customer service departments –the mere term “customer service” is enough to make many of us cringe – who have made us feel stupid, inept, and much worse at the end of the conversation, even if our problem has been solved. Ifbyphone believes in absolute commitment to our customers. There may be companies who offer some of the services we do at a more economical price, but no one in the industry offers the level of service and reliability that we do. If you have a problem – or just want some help figuring the best way to implement the Ifbyphone toolbox – you know we’ll get back to you quickly and amicably.

When you sign up with Ifbyphone you receive a top-notch product, but more than that you become privy to a qualified crew of industry experts who act as your own personal team of voice tech consultants. And getting great support to compliment the technology that will help your business grow – well, that’s what buzz is all about.