The Deep Dialing feature of Fonolo lets you skip through menu prompts and connect directly to the point in the phone menu that you need. The key to this process is having a map of the “phone tree” for each company in our database.
A question that I have been asked repeatedly is: “How do we keep our map of the phone trees in sync with the real phone systems?” It is indeed a challenge, because there is no way for us to be notified when a phone tree (officially known as an “IVR system”) has been changed. Remember, we don’t have any official arrangements with the companies in our database — they aren’t feeding us any data.
We use three techniques to keep the trees fresh:
1. Scheduled check-ups
Our automated system “spiders” through each company’s phone tree on a regular schedule, comparing what it hears with our database. If there’s any difference, that menu is flagged and then rebuilt from scratch.
2. User-driven validation
When a user requests a Deep Dial, our system dials the company and then navigates the phone menu to the desired location. At each step in the navigation, our system compares what it hears against our database. This gives us close to real-time notification of any changes. A nice consequence of this is that, as the number of users grows, Fonolo will getter better and better at staying in sync.
3. User feedback
Finally, we make it easy for our users to provide feedback on any errors encountered during the call.
There’s some more info about this topic in an excellent post on the Telco 2.0 blog: “IVR search: a ‘Google’ for phone menus?“
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