A lot of my readers are individual business owners, as in they do it all themselves, without a bit of help. That can stretch you to the limits once your business starts expanding. Sometimes it is all you can do to keep up with orders and answer all of the e-mail your business generates. In the midst of all of that you still need a way to connect personally to your customer, both existing and new. People are looking for real people with real voices when they approach a business.

If a new customer finds your site and wants to contact you, they probably have to use an e-mail form or pick up the phone and call. What if you could turn one click into immediate one-on-one communication with that potential customer?

Here is a very handy tool: Ifbyphone – free phone calls from your web site. The system gives you a link that can be placed on a webpage, Powerpoint Document, in an e-mail and even in a Word document. Your customer simply clicks that link and enters their phone number. Then, their phone rings, your phone rings and you are connected in real time! Nothing could be simpler. Plus, there’s absolutely no technical expertise needed.

The best part is that you don’t have to know anything about web design or phone systems or anything technical. It’s a simple system that anyone can use. And, you can sign up for a free account. Check out their site. They have a live demo so you can see how the system works right now.

Here is their press release, in case I left anything out:

Ifbyphone Releases revolutionary Phone-Me-Now: the world’s first Zero Configuration Click to Call With 100 free minutes per month Phone-Me-Now
Promises to be biggest Killer App of 2008

Chicago, IL: December, 2007 – Ifbyphone, a voice infrastructure and applications development company providing enterprise class services to Small and Medium sized Businesses (SMB’s), has just released a solution destined to revolutionize the web to voice space: Phone-Me-Now, a zero configuration click to call application. To introduce Phone-Me-Now to hundreds of thousands of businesses that will be able to use it as a sales tool, Ifbyphone is making it available free of charge for 6 months and providing the first 100 minutes per month of usage for free as well.

This patent pending solution can be integrated in less then 60 seconds into any website, email or hyperlinked document and requires no experience to configure. It’s literally the Internet’s first instant voice mash up tool.

“While many companies provide click to call services we were troubled by how complex they are to use. Users had to cut and paste HTML or javascript, rendering these services outside of the technical reach of thousands of businesses. Once we designed this patent pending solution we configured our existing smart click to call services to work with the Phone-Me-Now interface.” says Irv Shapiro, Founder and CEO of Ifbyphone. The zero configuration Phone-Me-Now service is literally the Holy Grail of web to telephone integration and ease of use.

Using Phone-Me-Now is as simple as typing: www.phone-me-now/your-business-number into any web site, Word Document, Powerpoint Presentation, Spreadsheet, PDF or email. When a reader clicks on the link they are prompted for their telephone number and the Ifbyphone systems call your business, calls the reader and conferences the call. Phone-Me-Now works with any telephone number you register on your Ifbyphone account.

“We wanted to eliminate any barriers to basic click to call, and know that Phone-Me-Now will immediately set an industry standard for rapid deployment. If the Internet is all about speed and response, what could be a more appropriate Killer App for 2008 than Phone-Me-Now, which puts a business owner in instant voice communication with their customers,” adds Shapiro.
Free Phone-Me-Now accounts can be updated to additional Ifbyphone packages that include:
- Click to Call with Custom Dialog Forms
- Integrated Call Routing and Reporting
- Find Me
- Virtual Voice Mail
- Virtual Receptionist
- Outbound Voice Broadcast
- Web Configured Voice Dialogs (Hosted IVR)
- Call Recording
- Backend Database Integration
- A Complete Call Management API

All Ifbyphone solutions work with any telephone system and are fully portable if a company moves from one telephone transport vendor to another.
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About Ifbyphone
Ifbyphone is a hosted voice application and platform company with a simplified approach to the deployment of stand-alone and web-integrated voice services for small and medium sized businesses (SMB). Combining advanced telephony and web services, Ifbyphone’s web-integrated voice applications turn the small business telephone into a powerful tool, increasing lead generation, improving sales conversion and enhancing the customer experience. Ifbyphone makes it easier for customers to connect with you from online and off. All of Ifbyphone’s applications are accessible via a click on a Web site, an inbound call to a toll free number, an outbound call or with the help of a programmable API. Our configuration and deployment tools look and feel just like Web applications, and require no previous knowledge of telephony programming or terminology.

Previously available only to large enterprises, Ifbyphone is delivering these converged voice and web solutions at affordable monthly fees, with no major upfront costs. The company’s services are available online and through a network of SMB value-added resellers.