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Show HN: "Never wait on hold again" service built with Rails and Twilio

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Re: Show HN: "Never wait on hold again" service built with Rails and Twilio

#41

Post by paulsingh »

tmayshark wrote: post #37

This is a great service, and if I was in a position where I had to deal with phone trees regularily for my job, then I'd even be willing to pay something for it. One minor gripe -- at least in Chrome, if you type something in ("Verizon") and hit enter without selecting any of the auto-complete options presented, you just get a generic "whoops, something went wrong". Ideally, just pop the user through a screen that le…

Ah, sorry about that - I'm working on cleaning things up as we speak. We hammered out the MVP pretty quickly and have been hustling to make the service more reliable, scaleable, etc.

Polish coming soon, promise! :)

Re: Show HN: "Never wait on hold again" service built with Rails and Twilio

#42

Post by jrockway »

I need this for conference calls. Normally, I dial in at the time the meeting is supposed to start, but nobody else comes for ten minutes. This means I have to sit around and listen to the "nobody has joined yet" music, which sucks.

A system where the system calls you when everyone has indicated availability would be much nicer. No wasted time dialing in.

And BTW, these conference call services typically cost something like 30 cents a minute times the number of participants. So if your product eliminated 30 wasted seconds of airtime per employee per day, you would save a company like mine 12 million dollars a year.

Re: Show HN: "Never wait on hold again" service built with Rails and Twilio

#44

Post by paulsingh »

capstone wrote: post #39

Just bought your app for my IPhone. One comment: the app is not searchable on Fast Customer, only on FastCustomer (no space). If you just added Fast Customer to your description, it would be searchable.

Thanks for the heads up. Apple won't let me edit the keywords until we submit an update (which, actually, is coming soon)... I'll definitely get this fixed on the next release.

Re: Show HN: "Never wait on hold again" service built with Rails and Twilio

#45

Post by paulsingh »

jrockway wrote: post #42

I need this for conference calls. Normally, I dial in at the time the meeting is supposed to start, but nobody else comes for ten minutes. This means I have to sit around and listen to the "nobody has joined yet" music, which sucks. A system where the system calls you when everyone has indicated availability would be much nicer. No wasted time dialing in. And BTW, these conference call services typically cost somethi…

This definitely sounds like a cool idea -- I'm adding it to my "have to do this sometime" list right now. :)

Re: Show HN: "Never wait on hold again" service built with Rails and Twilio

#46

Post by bschlinker »

mcantor wrote: post #30
baddox wrote: post #23

Do you play an automated message when the tech comes on the phone? How many phone service technicians will actually sit there and wait to be connected to the actual user?

Also, a lot of phone service reps are literally not able to end a call. Often, the customer has to do it.

Not too sure about that -- this would prevent phone reps from ending calls when the connection with the customer isn't functioning properly (but yet the line is still active).

Re: Show HN: "Never wait on hold again" service built with Rails and Twilio

#47

Post by paulsingh »

qixxiq wrote: post #36

I'm interested to know what you plan on doing for revenue. I'm sure the cost of the calls will quickly outweigh the $.70 you're getting out of the app store. Other than that its a great idea which I'm certain people would be willing to pay for (I would be if it was available internationally)

We're still figuring all that out -- for now, we just wanted to focus on making something that people want (ie, use).

Beyond that, we've got a couple of ideas that we'll be testing out -- maybe selling a brandable widget-based version to businesses, affiliate links, etc.

Not sure what will end up working but I can assure you that we'll be iterating pretty quickly. :)

Re: Show HN: "Never wait on hold again" service built with Rails and Twilio

#48

Post by Simon_M »

jrockway wrote: post #42

I need this for conference calls. Normally, I dial in at the time the meeting is supposed to start, but nobody else comes for ten minutes. This means I have to sit around and listen to the "nobody has joined yet" music, which sucks. A system where the system calls you when everyone has indicated availability would be much nicer. No wasted time dialing in. And BTW, these conference call services typically cost somethi…

Founder of a conference call start-up here.

This wouldn't work for conf call services as you'd still be charged from the moment a call was connected on your particular 'room' irrespective of who actually called it. Although it would certainly save time and you wouldn't have to listen to the annoying hold music.

Oh, and if you organisation is really paying 30 cents per minute, then you should get in touch as we could save them well over 12 million dollars a year! ;)

Regarding the dial-out when everyone's ready service... we're working on it.

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