I've used this service a couple of times, and everytime I don't have to wait on hold, I smile.
Show HN: "Never wait on hold again" service built with Rails and Twilio
11–20 of 88 posts
Re: Show HN: "Never wait on hold again" service built with Rails and Twilio
#12So which is it? Do we spend 50 hours or 60 hours on hold? It looks like an inconsistency on your home page marketing copy.
This looks like a great idea. I think it has great word of mouth potential.
Re: Show HN: "Never wait on hold again" service built with Rails and Twilio
#13Fonolo has been offering this type of service for a while ( http://fonolo.com ).
Fonolo is pretty cool. There's another similar service called LucyPhone. I'd say the main difference between those great services and ours is that with them you still have to be on the phone, listening to prompts and pressing buttons, and then they wait on hold for you. With our service you just press a button and go back to your life.
Eh? As far as I can tell, these services do everything yours does.
EDIT: actually, Lucy makes you do the phone menus yourself. But Fonolo crawls the voice menus and generates a matching menu online (which is very slick, if it works).
Re: Show HN: "Never wait on hold again" service built with Rails and Twilio
#14Great idea.
I think a lot of companies would love to add this to their own apps. You should start selling this to them ASAP.
Re: Show HN: "Never wait on hold again" service built with Rails and Twilio
#15Fonolo has been offering this type of service for a while ( http://fonolo.com ).
Fonolo is pretty cool. There's another similar service called LucyPhone. I'd say the main difference between those great services and ours is that with them you still have to be on the phone, listening to prompts and pressing buttons, and then they wait on hold for you. With our service you just press a button and go back to your life.
Interesting.
From what I recall, LucyPhone is based near you guys. You might want to link up, at least for a powwow. Mike is an awesome dude.
Re: Show HN: "Never wait on hold again" service built with Rails and Twilio
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fonolo is pretty cool. There's another similar service called LucyPhone. I'd say the main difference between those great services and ours is that with them you still have to be on the phone, listening to prompts and pressing buttons, and then they wait on hold for you. With our service you just press a button and go back to your life.
Eh? As far as I can tell, these services do everything yours does. EDIT: actually, Lucy makes you do the phone menus yourself. But Fonolo crawls the voice menus and generates a matching menu online (which is very slick, if it works).
I'm definitely a fan of both services, they're great. Our goal is just to take it one step further, and do it all for you. Fonolo does have a beautiful system with the menus, but they do call your phone for you to do the navigating. You can try it out at http://consumer.fonolo.com/
Re: Show HN: "Never wait on hold again" service built with Rails and Twilio
#17curious how you intend to handle abuse? Maybe have an sms sent to the recipient first and they must confirm? I was just able to enter the example number ("555-555-5555") and it seems to process just fine (currently "Status: Operator on the line! Trying to connect you...") even though I clearly don't own that number. I could cause problems for both customer service people and cellphone users with this. I'm assuming yo…
Great question. There are a few ways we could handle it, but in principle we want to see how the problem happens before solving it. A confirmation process is a great idea but adds friction, and as we roll out we don't want to discourage usage. Basically, we want to see what happens so we don't optimize or problem-solve too early.
my thoughts exactly. pre-mature optimization is the root of all evil. When I first heard of this idea I ran through a list of ways to abuse it and make you guys go bankrupt :), but I've found there are far fewer crooks out there than there are honest people.
I love how you solved a problem for me without me having to jump through hoops.
True to the spirit of a hacker. This just screams of awesome execution, it's very refreshing to see in these days of startups.
Re: Show HN: "Never wait on hold again" service built with Rails and Twilio
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fonolo is pretty cool. There's another similar service called LucyPhone. I'd say the main difference between those great services and ours is that with them you still have to be on the phone, listening to prompts and pressing buttons, and then they wait on hold for you. With our service you just press a button and go back to your life.
Interesting. From what I recall, LucyPhone is based near you guys. You might want to link up, at least for a powwow. Mike is an awesome dude.
Yeah, hopefully we'll meet up with them and say hello. I've heard only good things about them!
Re: Show HN: "Never wait on hold again" service built with Rails and Twilio
#19Are you A/B testing already? I like how the heading subtitle changes on every reload
Re: Show HN: "Never wait on hold again" service built with Rails and Twilio
#20So which is it? Do we spend 50 hours or 60 hours on hold? It looks like an inconsistency on your home page marketing copy. This looks like a great idea. I think it has great word of mouth potential.
Thanks for the catch, fixing it now. We hope it has word of mouth potential too!