Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 88 posts

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

#61

Post by ekanes »

mcantor wrote: post #31

Out of curiosity, how does your app know when a real human gets on the line...? Do you have a database of the automatic messages ("Please stay on the line while we sip Cognac and chortle") for each company so it doesn't get false positives?

Indeed, we split test Cognac vs other drinks as an indicator of the psychographic profile of operators at various companies. Groupon is all about the rum and cokes, whatever that means.

Kidding! Yeah we play a message so the operators can hit 1 to get their next call.

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

#62

Post by ekanes »

patio11 wrote: post #60

And if you were a forward thinking megacorp, you could build something like this yourself. "Hiya, this is Paypal. Hit 1 to talk to ... Thanks. Type in your last four digits of your... Thanks Mr. McKenzie. Would you prefer to hold while waiting for a representative, or should we call you back in approximately 15 minutes? Hit 1 to..." 15 minutes later. "Hello, is this Mr. McKenzie? Hiya, this is Steve at Paypal and I h…

Absolutely. There are a few startups doing this, ranging from hardware that companies install to software to "outside in" solutions like we're working on. As far as I understand this industry, the challenge is that they've all got massively complex dedicated IVR systems, and changing them is hard.

Some solutions will detect when call volumes are high, and allow you to put in your phone number to be called back. That's pretty cool, but you still have to call in, press buttons and wait to see if you get that message.

I agree though, in principle it's an area where companies could innovate. Unfortunately, customer service is typically approached as a cost to be minimized rather than an opportunity to be maximized. Zappos is the exception, etc.

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

#63

Post by ekanes »

jeffwidman wrote: post #54

ekanes--Have you looked into setting these up like freeconferencecall.com where it dead-ends the calls out of a rural area so you can collect subsidies? (Not a fan of the legislation, but if it exists you can leverage it.) Not sure how you'd do this using Twilio, but rather than routing the user straight to the number, you could route the user to the rural number and then place an outbound call from teh rural confere…

Interesting, thanks for the idea.

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

#64

Post by arafalov »

Glad you are having a go at it. I had some thoughts around that space a while ago: http://blog.outerthoughts.com/2007/01/calling-for-support-ca...

Point 6 there is similar to what you are trying to do.

Never did it, never will, but I do have a much longer document with additional idea directions and monetization strategies.

If you like and agree with the article, feel free to ping me and we can chat about the rest of the unreleased ideas. Like I said, I would be just happy for somebody to incorporate them.

Regards, Alexandre Rafalovitch

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

#65

Post by vyrotek »

patio11 wrote: post #60

And if you were a forward thinking megacorp, you could build something like this yourself. "Hiya, this is Paypal. Hit 1 to talk to ... Thanks. Type in your last four digits of your... Thanks Mr. McKenzie. Would you prefer to hold while waiting for a representative, or should we call you back in approximately 15 minutes? Hit 1 to..." 15 minutes later. "Hello, is this Mr. McKenzie? Hiya, this is Steve at Paypal and I h…

There are many SaaS companies which provide Call Center systems with the call back feature. It works just as you described. You call in and it asks for you phone number and calls you back when an agent is available. It even tells you your position in line if you call back too early.

http://www.incontact.com & http://www.liveops.com for those interested

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

#66

Post by mwill »

My ISP and phone provider iiNet (Based in Australia) do this. You call and chose the broad department you want to talk to (tech, sales, or billing), and you're told how long your wait is approximately, and asks if you want a callback on the number you're calling from.

Speaking from personal experience using this sort of system: It's fantastic to use and if you're successfully inserting yourself as the middleman in this sort of experience you're definitely on the right track.

I can see this also being extremely useful for call out tech people who need to jump on the phone to talk to their clients providers on regular occasion.

Great idea, if you expand to Australia it'll be a must have app for me.

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

#68

Post by ekanes »

arafalov wrote: post #64

Glad you are having a go at it. I had some thoughts around that space a while ago: http://blog.outerthoughts.com/2007/01/calling-for-support-ca... Point 6 there is similar to what you are trying to do. Never did it, never will, but I do have a much longer document with additional idea directions and monetization strategies. If you like and agree with the article, feel free to ping me and we can chat about the rest of…

Great ideas Alexandre, I'd love to talk.

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

#69

Post by ekanes »

mwill wrote: post #66

My ISP and phone provider iiNet (Based in Australia) do this. You call and chose the broad department you want to talk to (tech, sales, or billing), and you're told how long your wait is approximately, and asks if you want a callback on the number you're calling from. Speaking from personal experience using this sort of system: It's fantastic to use and if you're successfully inserting yourself as the middleman in th…

Thanks, Australia is high on our list when we get to more countries.

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

#70

Post by k33n »

patio11 wrote: post #60

And if you were a forward thinking megacorp, you could build something like this yourself. "Hiya, this is Paypal. Hit 1 to talk to ... Thanks. Type in your last four digits of your... Thanks Mr. McKenzie. Would you prefer to hold while waiting for a representative, or should we call you back in approximately 15 minutes? Hit 1 to..." 15 minutes later. "Hello, is this Mr. McKenzie? Hiya, this is Steve at Paypal and I h…

Delta Skymiles customer support has been doing this for awhile now.
Post reply on HN