We’ve made two big changes to Fonolo this week. The first one is our dramatic new pricing model, which I will cover in this blog post. The second is a new self-serve process for starting a free trial, which I’ll cover shortly.

Flat rate pricing: $10 per agent per month

The first remarkable thing about the pricing is that it has a very low entry point — just $99/mo for small companies. Virtual queuing has never been available in this price range before. (Not by a long shot!) And remember that Fonolo is much more than just virtual queuing. That price also includes visual navigation (using our unique Deep Dialing technology) from the web or mobile,  post-call surveys and more.

The second remarkable thing is that pricing is based on the number of agents rather than number of calls or minutes. We made this change in order to make it easier for you to buy. It’s easy to count how many agents you have. It’s harder to estimate how many calls or minutes you expect to pass through Fonolo. That’s an exercise we’ve gone through many times with our customers and, while we’ve gotten good at helping folks work through it, it was definitely a barrier to getting started. Now, that barrier is gone!

Behind the scenes

We are able to offer this new pricing primarily because we’ve built our own telephony infrastructure and we’ve reached a scale now where we can keep our costs-per-call quite low. (Having our own infrastructure has many other benefits such terrific uptime and being able to offer advanced features.)

Another reason we can offer flat-rate pricing is that we now have enough deployments under our belt to have a good feeling for how to budget for calls we can expect from any given situation.

Three tiers

Our “Starter” package is intended for small companies with fewer than 10 agents. It costs only $99/month and includes all the basic Fonolo features: Visual navigation from the web or mobile, Deep Dialing, and post-call surveys.

Our “Professional” package covers call centers up to 40 agents and costs $399/month. It also adds some advanced features such as pre-call questions and scheduled call-backs, so if you have a smaller call center but want these features, you can choose this package.

Our “Enterprise” package is for call centers with more than 40 agents. (There is no upper limit — we’ve done deployments with companies that have hundreds of agents.) This is also the package for anyone that needs an on-site deployment, international calling or multiple IVRs. Here is pricing gets more complicated because there are many more variables with larger call centers.

You can see all the details here: fonolo.com/pricing.

There’s nothing quite like getting great feedback from customers!  Here’s what Jeb Brilliant had to say about Fonolo in a recent Phone.com blog post:

I’ve written about fonolo before but I wanted to remind everyone about it.  It’s a service that holds your place in line until we have an operator ready to talk with you, leaving you to do whatever you want.

You just head our to our Customer Support page and take a look on the right side for the fonolo box titled Talk to us!  Select what you’re calling for, Sales or Customer Service, fill in your Phone.com number (if you have one, if not don’t put anything in there)  and the number you want us to call you back on.  Click Start Call and the then go about your business.  Once it’s your turn in our phone queue you’ll get a call from us and one of our operators will be on the other end of the call waiting to help you.

Jeb goes on to say:

We know you’re busy and don’t want to make you wait for us, we’ll wait for you.

Couldn’t have said that better myself.  And with Fonolo’s cloud-based virtual queuing services available for businesses of all sizes, nobody should ever have to wait on hold again.

One of the industry’s biggest events is taking place next week and Fonolo is proud to be a sponsor. The Call Center Summit kicks off in Orlando, Florida on Monday. You can follow news from the event via the twitter account CallCenterEvent.

I will be there representing Fonolo along with our CEO, Shai Berger. If you are attending the show and would like to talk, we would be delighted to meet with you! Just send me a note at chris@fonolo.com.

Oh, one last thing: You should definitely plan on  attending the Tuesday morning keynote. Not only is the speaker top-notch (Tracy Wright, the Director of Customer Care for Avon) but you will also find a tasty treat on your chair from us!

A new report is out highlighting the popularity of mobile banking in Canada. The “Canadian Online Banking Insights” report was published at the end of July by comScore. (Hat tip to MobileSyrup.)

Putting 12% in context

Quite a few good data points in there, but the one that caught my eye is that 12.3% of all mobile subscribers are using mobile banking. On one hand, this seems low, given that mobile banking has existed, in one form or another for almost 10 years. On the other hand, if you tried some of those early attempts at mobile banking, you’ll recall how unpleasant they were to use. The game didn’t really start until smartphones became prevalent (specifically the iPhone) about 4 years ago. And it took few more years after that to reach another important milestone that we hit only at the end of last year: Availability of iPhone apps from all the major banks in Canada. (See my post from December: RBC releases mobile app. Now all the banks are in.) With that in mind, the 12% number is actually quite impressive. (I haven’t seen any data, but I would guess that prior to 2010, that number was probably 1-2%.)

What’s behind the growth?

The forces propelling this growth are

1. Dramatic improvement of usability brought by the smartphone.
2. The growing penetration of smartphones.  (Read this: By 2015, smartphones will rule the mobile planet.)
3. Mobile banking apps are adding more functionality. One much anticipated improvement is the “eWallet” where small payments can be made directly from the phone.

But where is the call center?

However, one area where the apps have lagged is integration with the call center. Today, if you tap the “contact us” link, it simply triggers a regular phone call. No context from your on-device interactions is preserved (i.e. you are starting a new interaction “cold”). Furthermore, none of the amazing functionality of the smartphone is put to use. This is a very large wasted opportunity. It’s an opportunity to improve customer experience and to improve call center efficiency.

It’s just around the corner, actually

Luckily we’re working with a number of banks to change this situation. If you want a peak into the near future, download our whitepaper “Fonolo for the Financial Industry” or tune in tomorrow at 2pm ET for a webinar focused on the financial industry. (If you miss it, come back and watch the archive when you get a chance.)