2007 May 21

Inefficient to Efficient: Bringo

Like you probably are, I’m always frustrated when trying to navigate through call trees. I find myself zoning out when I hear, "Please listen carefully to the following options" and after I do make a connection, "Your call may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance purposes."

Bringo is a new service (with the unfortunately different NoPhoneTrees.com domain name since they started off apparently as a Dentist connection service) that provides an incredibly useful and efficient service: navigating phone trees so you can get connected with an actual human being.

I tried it with Vonage and was immediately connected to "advanced tech support" though scratched my head since what if I wanted to talk to customer service? Billing? I did, however, have an advanced tech question that’s been percolating on the back burner (did any other SIP softphone work with Vonage? No.) so I got that answered.

Next was a car rental company. Within moments I was connected with reservations so was able to ask about my next trip and any deals. Cool.

In both cases, I was pleased at how simple it was to use and that it removed a surprising amount of angst and bother when trying to connect to some company. I know they’re in beta, but they need a lot more companies in their database. What I’d also like to see going forward is to have them build-out per company selections for different departments within the company (e.g., tech support, advanced tech support, customer service, billing, supervisors, etc.).

Bringo is a perfect example of what I posted about a week and a half ago about the Internet making the inefficient, efficient.

One more thing: I’d like to see Bringo add recording to their service. When I mentioned above how every company seems to have some variation on the phrase, "Your call may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance purposes", I’ve clearly agreed to a recording or monitoring of my call. Sometimes with critical support, reservation, billing or other calls I record it on my end too with Audio Hijack Pro since I call-out often using Skype and recording it is a two click process (and it’s legal in Minnesota).

Under Minnesota Statute 626A.02, Subdivision 2: Exemptions, (c): It is not unlawful under this chapter for a person acting under color of law to intercept a wire, electronic, or oral communication, where such person is a party to the communication or one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to such interception. In order to deploy a recording service, Bringo would have to ensure that somehow that statement is made to me, a caller, and that I’m the agreeing party to the call.

If Bringo could offer it in those areas where an agreeing party recording a call is legal (and it may be nationally), they could legally record it and make it available for download only to the account holder who is the agreeing party. What a fantastic audit trail this would make in the event of an arbitration or lawsuit!

A Design Story: 11Mystics

Sit back, relax and let me tell you a short story about design, pent-up demand and being positioned well for the next big evolution of the Web.

You know I’ve talked before on how design matters…a lot. That said, there seems to be a huge reluctance on the part of tools providers to make a tool high function and high design. They either throw in every possible feature or make a tool so stupid simple that anyone serious would be embarrassed to use them.

But in a time of accelerating change around people generating content, increasingly using the Web for communications and participation, there is significant pent-up demand for easy-to-use, highly functional and in-the-hands-of-mere-mortals vs. propeller-headed designer toolsets and some vendors are shipping new tools that are meeting demand in the marketplace.

Last October we embarked upon an adventure to build Rise of the Participation Culture, initially as a Web-based report. It seemed prudent to use content management or blogging engines like Drupal, Joomla, WordPress or even Typepad to deliver it, but the realization quickly came to us that we were considering using bazooka’s to kill an ant.

I’m revealing for the first time — and holding myself up for potential ridicule from those who view iWeb, Rapidweaver (RW) or Sandvox as "stupid simple" or "Borsch you should be embarrassed to use it" — that we used iWeb to deliver the report. It was clearly a 22 caliber pistol to go after that ant and allowed us to quickly deliver the content…and that’s what mattered and no one cared if it was created in Dreamweaver, Expression or any other higher level and more complex tool.

As has always been my experience, the stock templates in iWeb are cheesy so I went on the hunt for more professional looking templates (and one that would resemble the look-n-feel of my blog).

I found them at 11Mystics since I was searching for great design that I could map to iWeb and 11Mystics offered very nice templates that would do the job. After buying one and discovering that the PNG images wouldn’t render in Internet Explorer 6 (one reason why I wrote When Will Internet Explorer 6 Die?), I queried support and the owner, Suzanne ~~Boden~~ Boben, and I began interacting by email. She provided us with a pre-release version of the template with JPG images instead of PNGs and it was flawless. GREAT customer service.

But it gets more interesting and revealing. I’ll tell you why all of this matters to you and how I perceive Suzanne as the poster child for remaking yourself and creating a business where one didn’t exist through great design, filling a need and being well versed at conversational marketing.

[Read more...]