Cool Site of the Day

Wow — busy week, as nophonetrees was chosen by Kim Komando as the cool site of the week, and were also on several local TV outlets, including South Florida’s NBC affiliate.

We’re getting a ton of great feedback from all the new (and returning) users — keep it coming, as that’s how we keep our phone trees up to date and continue to improve the site!

More Information = Better Healthcare

I attended a great conference last week (not only great because it was in Orlando while I am in cold Chicago)….but also because of the quality of speakers.  I was giving the talk on Healthcare and Technology, particularly how payers and providers can embrace the internet and leverage the power of new technology to grow their businesses and their practices.   For those of you interested in the conference….it already happened but here’s the link:  http://www.iirusa.com/dentalbenefits/eventhome/35951.xml

Okay, onto some fascinating data points shared by presenters that got my attention and should get yours:

1)  According to a study by IOM (Institute of Medicine), it takes an average of 17 years from the time when a new discovery/treatment that is proven effective (e.g. treating ulcers with medication) for that treatment to become widely practiced.

2)  According to a study by NCQA, 57,000 people die every year in America because physicians are not following clear trends from ”evidence-based medicine.”  Said another way, this is the staggering cost of the 17 year delay game because it’s hard to spread information throughout our fragmented health care system.

3)  We all know about the challenge of rising Medicaid and Medicare costs.  We also know that we sometimes get better data from the government sponsored programs than we get from the fragmented insurance industry, so from both perspectives….think about this….The Institute of Medicine did a study in 2006 that found 50 cents of EVERY $1 dollar spent by Medicare was spent in the last 8 weeks of a patients life.

4)  Some other engaging Medicaid/Medicare facts:  these programs cover 65% of all nursing home residents in the United States (44% of all nursing home costs).  In 2005, Medicaid passed up Medicare in terms of the # of lives covered.  In an average month, there are 49 million Americans covered under Medicaid. 

Fascinating stuff.  Data can help us understand our costs better, help patients and providers make better choices, and even start a discussion about how we as a society spend our valuable healthcare dollars.

Stay warm everyone….the winter is almost over….

Thanks,

mark

Great Wall Street Journal Article about Customer Service

Terry Cullen of the Wall Street Journal posted a great article today about how to get what you want from customer service.

Better yet, it mentioned NoPhoneTrees.com as a great way to get to a human rep on the phone!

Welcome Yahoo Readers

Looks like we made the front page of Yahoo again:

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/71906/how-to-get-a-human-on-the-phone

Welcome to those folks who are seeing our site for the first time (and also our loyal returning visitors). We’ve been getting a bunch of new traffic along with a ton of great feedback from folks who are using the site. Despite what the article says, we have been and continue to constantly update existing phone trees scripts and add new ones to make sure that it’s as easy as possible for you to bypass the phone trees and reach a live operator at hundreds of companies.

For those who are new to the site, you can view a complete list of company categories and view a complete list of companies that you can contact through Bringo. Our most popular categorie include auto insurance, airlines, mortgages, and health insurance plans.

Keep the feedback coming — it’s our best way of knowing which companies to add, and when we need to update a listing to keep it top working condition!

Google Mimics BRINGO

A friend passed this on to me — apparently Google is starting to test out a service that mimics our NoPhoneTrees service. See text from an e-mail sent out to their premium advertisers:

“We’re testing a new support option that allows you to contact an AdWords Specialist by phone with just the click of a button. We pay for the call and we even do the dialing — all you need to do is pick up the phone and talk.

Try it out by visiting our Help Center via the ‘Contact Us’ link within your account. After clicking ‘Contact Us,’ follow the prompts to identify your concern. You’ll then be offered the option to speak directly to an AdWords Specialist by entering your contact phone number and clicking ‘Call.’ When your phone rings, answer it; you’ll hear ringing on the line as we connect you directly to our AdWords support team.”

Bravo, Google — if more companies would implement this type of interface, it would eliminate the need for services like nophonetrees.com.  I haven’t seen it in action, but if it works as subscribed, it would seem to save a lot of hassle and frustration for users who have access to the system.

Of course, Google seems only to be making this available to premium customers, as opposed to the general public — all the rest of us can use BRINGO to reach Google AdWords Support.

Happy Holidays

It’s been an interesting month for us as we approach end of year — we were featured on a nationally syndicated radio program, as well as on Fox news television affiliates across the country.  This in addition to ramping up our BringoDentist and related products has made it a very busy month to cap off a great year.

Happy holidays to all our users, customers, partners from the Bringo team — thanks for your continued support.  We’re looking forward to great things in 2008.

BRINGO on the radio

Tonight we’ll be featured live on Craig Crossman’s syndicated Computer America radio show (some of you may have seen his article on us published in the San Jose Mercury News, Siliconvalley.com,  or the Seattle Times.  From what I understand they will open the show up to questions from listeners as well as from the show’s host.  So if you have a few minutes and a question to ask, drop by!

Happy Thanksgiving

Just a quick note as we prepare to head off for Thanksgiving.

It’s a busy time of year as people head off to see family and friends for the holiday, and kick off the holiday shopping season (not to mention year-end crunches at work and school). This time of year has traditionally been busy at BRINGO too — our healthcare businesses are really starting to gain traction, and our nophonetrees.com site has seen good bumps in traffic at this time of year as people use it to save time and hassle in their dealings with airlines, merchants, etc.

So a quick note of thanks to our customers, partners, and users — have a great holiday weekend, and travel safe!

It’s almost halloween, but don’t be afraid (OR – how BRINGO protects your privacy)

Hello everyone and happy (almost) Halloween.  On the occasion of this spooky time of year, I thought I would share with everyone an e-mail exchange that just occured and can help you understand (one more reason why) it’s not just safe to use BRINGO nophonetrees, it’s actually SAFER than picking up the phone and calling a toll free number yourself.  The more you are concerned about privacy, the more appealing the BRINGO nophonetrees platform actually is….and this is not just for our nophonetrees business but also our healthcare modules.  In today’s world, privacy is critical (especially in healthcare).

 So, on Saturday one of our many new users these days (referrals keep growing the traffic) wrote us angry that the day after she used our service, she received 12 tele-marketing calls.  Understandably, she presumed we were the cause.  Here was my response to her (I changed her name to Jane Doe) and her response back:

Mark to Jane Doe:

I received your e-mail and wanted to immediately respond back to you.  I am the owner and operator of the nophonetrees.com site (along with my partners) and I can assure you, WE SIMPLY DO NOT SELL PHONE NUMBERS.  We have strict password protection on all our data, and no one has access to it.  Our policy is clearly stated in our statement of terms, and if we did indeed break this policy we could (and SHOULD) be sued.  Heck, I’d be furious if someone did that to me.

I am sure you relayed your experience accurately (used our site and then got telemarketing calls) but there must have been something else that also occured to trigger these calls.  We not only give your phone number away, but when you use our service the company you are calling does not know your phone number (careful as calling many 1-800 phone numbers directly can lead to your phone # getting onto a call list).

We have been around for more than one year now, get used by hundreds of people per day, and frankly…this is the first time someone we have gotten this kind of customer feedback.  I wanted to write you personally and assure you that your problems with telemarketers did not originate with us.  Our whole business is to help people protect their privacy and avoid the marketers.  We have been covered everywhere from the Wall Street Journal, NPR, CBS, NBC, etc….and they have delved deep enough to know that we are not a fly-by-night company nor do we cheat our users.

Sorry that you ended up in tele-marketing hell (and indeed it is hell), but I wanted to assure you that it did not come from BRINGO.

Best Regards,
Mark Grazman
Co-Founder, BRINGO.com

And the next day, here was Jane Doe’s response back to me:

 Dear Mark,

    

    Thank you for your prompt response to my concern.  I apologize, but I was wrong.  I had not seen a privacy policy when using your site, and thought I was being hammered with phone calls because of it.  I am on the DO NOT CALL list until 2008, and happened to receive 12 telemarketing calls the day after using your site…..and they keep calling.   As it so happens, all of the telemarketing phone calls traced back to AT&T, whose phone service I dropped a couple of weeks ago.  THAT incident was the source of the problem.  I’m sorry for the inconvenience.

Sincerely, Jane Doe

I simply couldn’t pass up my Jerry Springer moment and the conversation ended with my sending Jane Doe the moral of the story:

Dear Jane Doe,

Once again, sorry you experienced telemarketing hell but I am glad that your image of BRINGO has been cleared up.  Our shared respect of privacy is important, and I hope you continue to use the nophonetrees service and tell your friends!  Not only is it more convenient and time-saving, but importantly it protects privacy.  Most call centers capture your phone number when you call, and there are services that can match more than 80% of Americans phone numbers with specific demographic data that they can use for further targeting.  At least there is the do-not-call list, that helps but so too does BRINGO.

Have a great day,

Mark Grazman

Update on New Companies

Here is a list of companies, that we recently added to NoPhoneTrees.com:

1. Auto Companies

Auto Parts:
Briggs & Stratton – Customer Service Phone Number
Goodyear – Customer Service Phone Number

2. Retail

General Electronics:
Casio – Customer Service Phone Number
Hitachi – Customer Service Phone Number
Magnavox – Customer Service Phone Number
Philips Electronics – Customer Service Phone Number
Sharp – Customer Service Phone Number
Circuit City – Customer Service Phone Number

DVD Stores:
Columbia House DVD – Customer Service Phone Number

Products for Children:
Evenflo – Customer Service Phone Number
Fisher Price – Customer Service Phone Number
Graco – Customer Service Phone Number
Kolcraft – Customer Service Phone Number
Little Tikes – Customer Service Phone Number
Mattel – Customer Service Phone Number
Disney Shopping – Customer Service Phone Number

Home Accessories:
Frigidaire Parts – Customer Service Phone Number
GE Appliances – Customer Service Phone Number
Whirlpool – Customer Service Phone Number
Ace Hardware – Customer Service Phone Number
Home Shopping Net – Customer Service Phone Number

Air Condition:
Holmes – Customer Service Phone Number

Health & Fitness:
Johnson & Johnson – Customer Service Phone Number

Photo Camera / Photo Camera Accessories:
Kodak Gallery (Ofoto) – Customer Service Phone Number
Olympus – Customer Service Phone Number
Polaroid – Customer Service Phone Number

Food & Drink:
PepsiCo – Customer Service Phone Number
Poland Spring – Customer Service Phone Number

General Consumer Products:
Procter & Gamble – Customer Service Phone Number
Borders – Customer Service Phone Number

Flowers:
Teleflora – Customer Service Phone Number

Shipping Companies:
DHL Express – Customer Service Phone Number
Union Pacific – Customer Service Phone Number
UPS (International Shipping) – Customer Service Phone Number

Furniture:
Bed, Bath & Beyond – Customer Service Phone Number
Ikea – Customer Service Phone Number

Wholesale:
BJ’s Wholesale Club – Customer Service Phone Number
Dillard’s – Customer Service Phone Number

Movie Rental:
Blockbuster – Customer Service Phone Number

Hunting Accessories:
Cabela’s – Customer Service Phone Number

3. Media Companies

Magazines:
Entertainment Weekly – Customer Service Phone Number
Money Magazine – Customer Service Phone Number
Newsweek – Customer Service Phone Number
PC World – Customer Service Phone Number
People Magazine – Customer Service Phone Number
Reader’s Digest – Customer Service Phone Number
Time Magazine – Customer Service Phone Number

Newspapers:
New York Times – Customer Service Phone Number
USA Today – Customer Service Phone Number
Wall Street Journal – Customer Service Phone Number
Washington Post – Customer Service Phone Number

Direct Marketing Companies:
Pitney Bowes Equipment – Customer Service Phone Number

4. Computer Companies

Computer Support:
Geek Squad – Customer Service Phone Number

Hardware:
Lexmark – Customer Service Phone Number
Netgear – Customer Service Phone Number
CompUSA – Customer Service Phone Number

Software:
Intuit – Customer Service Phone Number
Microsoft – Technical Support Phone Number

5. Communication Companies

Mobile:
Nokia – Customer Service Phone Number

GPS Navigation:
TomTom – Customer Service Phone Number