Fonolo Cuts Through Corporate Voicemail Trees [Phone Support]

[Field Nurse]

Fonolo, an online phone tool for getting past all the "Press X for ..." prompts on customer service numbers, is now open for public beta. Our sister site Consumerist took a screenshot tour when Fonolo was privately tested, and it looks much the same—in other words, just as cool. Pick a company, browse their phone directory tree by title and automated dialog, choose where you want to jump in, and Fonolo calls you with a direct connection there. We gave Fonolo a quick spin this morning, so read on for screenshots and a quick tutorial on working some auto-dial jujitsu.
Fonolo has limited their directory of businesses covered during their beta phase, but there's still a good range of companies covered—credit card issuers, cell carriers, retailers, even AARP and EZ-Pass (the New-England-area auto-toll taker). Once you've signed up with a username, password, email, and your phone numbers, you'll validate your email and be on your way.
After searching or browsing through their directory for the firm you want to get into, hit the "View Menu" button to see Fonolo's trace of their automated phone tree. You can click "Call here" to get to any area, and where you see little human icons, that's a direct connection to a customer service representative—the person you usually try to get to by jamming "0."

The one drawback I see at a glance is that Fonolo can't auto-store account numbers and get you past the prompts asking for them. That's obviously a whole bushel of privacy and security issues to deal with, but if I'm looking to get deep into a company to deal with a thorny issue, I definitely want to skip past carefully entering 16 digits over touch-tone.

If you've found the prompt, or human, you want to connect to, simply hit the button and Fonolo asks which of your phones you want to be called on when it gets through. It's not instant, because Fonolo is actually doing the drudgery of dialing, pressing "1" for English, hitting "3" for customer service on existing accounts, etc. And you can watch it happen—or, actually, just walk away and wait for your cell to ring:

Fonolo's service worked for me on the three services I tried out—Chase credit cards, HSBC, and EZ-Pass—but, as noted above, I usually couldn't get past any point where the company wanted an account number to continue. Once you're done calling, you can take note of what happened or what needs to be done on the next call, and leave Fonolo some feedback if you had problems:

That's about it for this beta of Fonolo. Sign-ups are free at the moment, so if you give it a try, let us know how it works for you. Looking for a less automated end-run around customer service prompts? Try the Dial A Human! directory, or the previously mentioned 99-cent iPhone app Direct Line.
Fonolo [via Web Worker Daily]

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