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!

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About Steve Borsch

Strategist. Learner. Idea Guy. Salesman. Connector of Dots. Friend. Husband & Dad. CEO. Janitor. More here.

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Podcasting hit the mainstream in July of 2005 when Apple added podcast show support within iTunes. I'd seen this coming so started podcasting in May of 2005 and kept going until August of 2007. Unfortunately was never 'discovered' by national broadcasters, but made a delightfully large number of connections with people all over the world because of these shows. Click here to view the archive of my podcast posts.