Likelihood to Recommend For Insurance agencies, small practices, small call centers, anyone that need call forwarding or work with his number remotely while away from office. I can't list all the things I'm gaining as a Fonality customer. From the installation process, the configuration phase with the technicians, the account managers, every Fonality employee was professional and savvy. I was a contact center specialist for more than 10 years and I can tell you that I've never been this happy with a service! Never! Probably if you need a more complex solution and you have an enterprise level company having your own hardware gives you more control over your calls and how to manage them. But again, I think that Fonality can cover most scenarios without the need of a huge investment.
Read full review Despite the cost, the ease with which you are able to navigate the system is actually tedious. We have to have specialists in the business to aid in getting some of the reports and making changes to the system. Calls are delayed between us and customers as there is no tower on our continent for the system.
Read full review Pros From an administrator's perspective, Fonality makes administering the company's phone system easy. Configuration menus and setup options are logically structured and easy to understand. Technical support has been very good. Early on in our deployment, we had some nagging voice quality issues which were network related. Fonality provided exceptional support even though it was not technically their issue. It is important to know ahead of time how well your vendors work with other vendors for integrated services like a VOIP telephone system. Fonality support demonstrated their patience and perseverance in helping us resolve our issues. Although we don't use remote office capabilities much, the ability to set up phones on the system in remote locations has been a significant help to several of our departments. Read full review We were able to replace on-premise solution with Talkdesk Cloud solution within project timelines We were able to migrate region by region while keeping our existing IVR numbers to minimize the impact on customer. We were able to integrate Talkdesk with our cloud CRM, AWS storage and reporting applications The IVR flow changes are easier to understand and manage and to onboard any new team members to support the agents Read full review Cons Bugginess - Some things just really need some tweaking. I had to get very creative with my call routing and hold music, because the in-queue announcements don't work right at all. For example, even set to 'play once' it would loop the 'you are the first caller' announcement over and over, and cause call drops. Or my caller-name ID, which shows the registered user's name on each line on outgoing calls, even though it's not set to such anywhere in the CP settings. Support - I'll give them 50/50 on this. My experience with Verizon VCE was everyone playing hot potato with issues and saying it was the responsibility of another department, meaning several phone calls and lots of hold time. Fonality doesn't have that issue, I've never really been passed around or blown off. However, some of the 'offshore' CS reps are... wow. I spent about half a dozen emails back and forth with two of them, trying to figure out why queues I deleted from the CP randomly and consistently reappeared in the HUD. Most of those emails were spent trying to explain that no, my issue was NOT that I wanted to create those queues again in the CP. Read full review From experience, customer service is terrible, we've had 5 account executives over 18 months, extremely difficult to get timely answers to pressing issues. Integration with other tools, such as ServiceNow, is not truly integration (in my opinion). There was a marked difference between what the salesperson communicated during the evaluation period and what we actually got once we purchased and implemented the product. We continue to have stability issues which force our agents to restart the Talkdesk client. I frequently receive vague error messages ('something went wrong') that can be frustrating as there's no actual detail to what happened. To be fair, it has improved since we implemented the tool, but if you were to ask our agents what frustrated them, Talkdesk would be at the top of their list. Being a multi-channel platform was one of the things that drew us to Talkdesk; however, the chat channel lags way behind voice in customization and reporting. Lack of training resources. The 'Talkdesk Academy' is often very out-of-date. Would be nice to have actual webinars or online training (even paid training) for various functions of the tool like reporting, WFM, IVR, etc. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We've already made a deep investment in the system hardware. We wouldn't be interested in another system at this point! And by the look of my colleagues faces when they see the HUD, I don't think we'd want to switch to a system that would limit us or take away any of these features! We may look at putting the server in the cloud, should internet outages prove to be such a common issue that it is preventing our other locations from functioning smoothly
Read full review Renewing the use of talkdesk is a cost-effective solution for our company. By continuing to use it, we can leverage potential cost savings and efficiencies. For instance, talkdesk may have features that automate certain processes or enable better resource allocation, resulting in reduced operational costs. Secondly, renewing the contract contributes to enhanced customer service. Talkdesk likely offers specific functionalities that improve customer satisfaction and support. This could include features such as intelligent routing or real-time analytics that help agents provide personalized assistance and resolve issues more effectively. Thirdly, renewing the contract ensures seamless integration and compatibility with other systems or technologies used in our company. Having a unified system across different departments or functions enhances efficiency and reduces potential disruptions caused by incompatible systems. Moreover, there may be benefits gained from data sharing or streamlined workflows enabled by an integrated platform.
Read full review Usability Overall excellent usability, with a few adjustments I feel this is the absolute best VoIP system out there. Just a clarification on the licences and limit the interface to reflect what licence we have. There should be a back or redunancy feature to Fonality Server, If there was a mistake we should be able to resort back to a usable state asap. Before implementing changes to the server, there should be a trial or sample of the changes to make sure it behaves as intended before effecting customer experience. It would be nice to have a demo version of Fonality interface so possible clients can truly evauluate the system. Because of the quality, it would have made it easier to convince the owners to make the transition sooner
Read full review Talkdesk so far has lived up to its mission grants us a platform to use and engage with our population. They are able to reach us consistently and as they need with very few interruptions in services which for a tech company is not an easy thing to achieve. The platform is very simple to use and understand
Read full review Reliability and Availability Fonality has been available to us 99% of the time. There have rarely been any lengthy outages. If any issues do occur, their support staff is available around the clock to help. This is important, since communication is a big part in our company and availability of the phone system is important in maintaining this reliability
Read full review I have never had a problem making a phone call or an issue getting a line out. More times than not it is the customer that will have a bad connection or have a lot of noise on their end. I have had experience w/ dropped calls, but never not being able to access a line
Read full review Performance Fonality's performance is excellent. The phones work flawlessly and the calls are clear. It is a well put-together system that does not need daily support. It is not complex from a user standpoint, as most of our staff are quick to learn how to use the phones. More systems should strive to work as well as Fonality's
Read full review We have never had a Talkdesk performance issue. As long as you follow the system requirements, which are MINIMAL, neither will you.
Ken Cohen SVP, Business Development and Consumer Sales
Read full review Support Rating Because of their customer support and their attention for details in our problems that we face during our initial stage. We simply love fonality just for the way we are treated when we reach them with our fonality issues - they take it seriously and resolve it as early as possible and the most important part is we dont need to keep on insisting them to do so.
Read full review If Talkdesk had a dedicated phone support line I would have given this rating an overall 10. Their knowledge base is absolutely HUGE and at times very helpful. It's easy to search through and their customer support chat system works perfectly fine, but there are just some times that you need to speak to a human on the phone to ensure you are always on the same page.
Read full review In-Person Training Training was provided by the in-house IT administrator. Fonality was able to provide support to the admin, who then assisted the users. It went smoothly and all the details and functions of the system were made available to the office staff. Any questions were answered promptly and if any issues did arise, Fonality was available to answer them
Read full review I was shown how to use Talkdesk and was happy with it. I learned all I needed.
Read full review Online Training Training was excellent, but most of what they had was webinars and not real world situation for our company's need. It would be better to have them remote in my local computer and test my system using inbound / outbound calls. This would have made it easier to learn and more relevant
Read full review Training was simple as the app is easy to use. The phone has gone through upgrades since but it's very adaptive and doesn't require a complete session. There are articles available for self help in case something is forgotten. There are a lot of functions to talkdesk and we have not used all of them
Read full review Implementation Rating Everything from the installation to the implementation has been great with Fonality, there is a lot of freedom to how the system will operate but the freedom comes at a cost of more technical experience to make sure it is configured correctly. The staff is very helpful can will make sure that the system is setup correctly and work perfectly.
Read full review Really easy to get set up out of the box. Anything I needed to understand further, I was able to just hop into the Academy and self-teach. I could then bring my team-members to those same sections so they could learn as well without me having to put together complicated SOP's / etc
Read full review Alternatives Considered I have not used any other VoIP system that I have been paying for. I hope that Fonality proves itself enough to where I will not have to switch. So far, for the price and the functionality, this is my recommendation for small businesses. I might recommend going with a more high end phone to increase functionality, but other than that, the system is one I would definitely recommend.
Read full review We were unable to easily access call metrics using WM. Since the switch to Talkdesk, we have not had to struggle with our reporting at all. All the information we need is readily available and can be exported. We are also able to modify the metrics that we need and have them compiled in different ways. The information on Talkdesk is modifiable and makes it easy for us to get the numbers that we need at the end of the day.
Read full review Scalability It is easy to scale this system, as long as you have the proper technical staff available to support it. Adding users and phones is straightforward. The main work involves having the physical network in place and configuring the networking equipment. Overall, it is not that difficult as long as all of this is in place.
Read full review We have over 200 employees in 11 states across the United States. Everyone uses Talkdesk. I believe that says a lot about the product and its flexibility. We need to be able to rely on system in order to assist our customers. Reliability and sustainability is important to our success
Read full review Return on Investment We are still new to Fonality, but having the flexability has proven quite successful thus far. The management of incoming calls and voicemail messages has really helped us to be able to follow up with potential clients. The service at Fonality helped our new business take a leap into 2017, and we expect much growth with the continued use of Fonality. Read full review Decreased average response time on emails - due to proper forecasting by our team but of course by usage of data received from this tool. Increase in quality audit scores through weekly reviews by this tool. Employee morale and company survey as agents are not stressing with the easy use of this tool. Reduced average handle time to ensure first response is addressed or first rings are addressed immediately. Read full review ScreenShots