How VONK helps customers with Fonzer without the phone taking a holiday too
Choosing a charging station, home battery or smart energy system is not something you do between two coffees. Customers have questions, want clear answers quickly and expect to reach the right expert. That is exactly why availability at VONK is about more than simply "answering the phone".
VONK helps individuals and businesses with end-to-end charging solutions, solar panels, home batteries and smart energy management. The company combines technical advice, installation and follow-up to take the hassle out of things for customers in a rapidly changing energy market. For sales representative Kevin Cools, that means a broad role: from the initial lead and quote to planning, aftercare, inspections and post-installation support.
But there was one problem: the phone did not stop ringing when the workday ended. Customers called employees on their personal numbers, including at weekends and during holidays. VONK was not looking for a complicated call centre, but for a simple way to remain professionally available, route calls correctly and let employees truly switch off when they are not working.
With Fonzer, VONK got a cloud telephony solution that grows with the team: available during opening hours, smoothly forwarding calls when needed and offering voicemail when everyone is offline.
"With Fonzer, we can simply switch off the app when we are on leave. Customers can then be referred to a colleague, or leave a voicemail and we will call them back as soon as possible." Kevin Cools, Sales Representative at VONK
About VONK and Kevin Cools
VONK specialises in smart energy solutions for home and business use. The company installs charging stations for electric vehicles and helps customers use their energy more intelligently with solar panels, home batteries and energy management.
For residential customers, the focus is often on home charging and energy storage. A home charging station makes charging safe, fast and affordable. A home battery stores surplus solar energy for later use. Smart energy management also allows solar panels, batteries and charging stations to work together as one system.
Kevin mainly guides residential customers from start to finish. His working day covers a broad range of tasks:
- Following up on new leads and handling initial customer contact
- Preparing and following up on quotes
- Scheduling appointments, materials and technicians
- Guiding customers through installation and inspection
- Providing aftercare and resolving questions remotely
- Passing more complex questions on to the right colleague
That broad responsibility makes smooth telephone availability essential. Anyone calling with a question about a charging station, home battery or e-credits does not want to get lost in a general number or have to explain their situation all over again.
Before Fonzer: calls to personal numbers
Before switching to Fonzer, VONK's telephony was barely optimised. Customers called employees directly on their personal numbers. That worked as long as everyone was available, but there was no scalable way to keep a growing energy company professionally available by phone.
For Kevin, that meant calls from unknown numbers kept coming in during the evenings, at weekends and while he was on leave. At a certain point, he stopped answering them every time, leaving him unsure whether it was an important customer query, an existing customer with an urgent problem or simply an unknown number.
The turning point came when Kevin raised the issue with managing director Fré Wollants. VONK wanted to keep helping customers professionally, without availability meaning that employees had to be available all the time.
Fonzer offered exactly that balance: professional business numbers, automatic call forwarding and voicemail outside opening hours.
One number, clear follow-up
Today, incoming calls at VONK are routed logically. During opening hours, calls to the general number go to Kevin first. If he does not answer—for example, because he is with a customer, on the road or already on another call—the call is automatically forwarded to his colleagues Jeroen and Fre after a few rings.
If they are unavailable too, the caller can leave a voicemail. The voicemail arrives by email, so Kevin can immediately see what the question is about and who is best placed to follow it up.
That may seem like a small difference, but in a technical and commercial process, it is exactly here that the customer experience is shaped. If a question is about e-credits, for example (which also has a separate direct number), Kevin can put the call on hold, check with Fre and transfer the customer directly. A B2B question goes straight to the person responsible. If someone asks for information about a home charging station, Kevin handles the follow-up himself.
"Call forwarding makes everything much easier. If a question belongs with the right colleague, I can check with them straight away and transfer the customer directly." Kevin Cools, Sales Representative at VONK
This keeps customer contact personal, while availability no longer depends on one person or one personal mobile phone.
For VONK, that means:
- Less risk of incoming calls going unanswered
- Voicemails directed to the right employee
- Better distribution of questions between sales, management and specialists
- A clear boundary between working hours and personal time
- A consistent, professional first impression for customers
"For us, Fonzer is above all convenient, fast and hassle-free." Kevin Cools, Sales Representative at VONK
Easy to learn, quick to get started
VONK deliberately chose a simple set-up. No maze of applications, just a system employees can use after a brief explanation. Kevin quickly got the hang of Fonzer and uses the smartphone app every day for incoming calls and call forwarding.
The barrier to getting started stays low even as the team grows. A new colleague only needs access to the app and the right settings. According to Kevin, they can be up and running with the phone system within five to ten minutes.
Ready for further growth
VONK is only at the beginning of what is possible with Fonzer. For now, the focus is on a practical foundation: a professional number, clear availability, automatic call forwarding and voicemail delivered by email for quick follow-up.
In the future, that foundation can be expanded with additional integrations, reporting and possibly AI features such as transcriptions, summaries or a virtual assistant for recurring first-line questions.
Would you also like to stay professionally available without your personal number ending up everywhere? Contact Fonzer to discover how cloud telephony can give your team more clarity and peace of mind.