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263 points bigmicro | 5 comments | | HN request time: 0.631s | source

Hello HN community,

This is bootstrapped/indie hacker-ish. Would appreciate feedback.

What it is: You create a link (e.g. onair/yourname), and anyone can call you from it. Caller uses a web browser to make the call (not dedicated app). You can create as many links as you want, and can direct calls to colleagues in a round-robin or escalation manner.

In a way, it's like the "opposite of Calendly"; whereas Calendly is about meetings in the future, OnAir is about immediate meetings.

Motivation behind it: One of our SaaS products was struggling to grow. We believed that if we provide more "hand holding" to visitors on the landing page, it will increase conversion. It's like speaking to the guy behind the counter before making a purchase. That idea/experiment, over time, became OnAir.

Feedback: Identifying the perfect use case / customer has not been easy. E-Commerce store owners, which I thought would be ideal customer profile, are not responding as expected (e.g. "why use this instead of a WhatsApp button?"). The value of branded links, round-robin, recording/transcription, lead capture, etc does not seem to matter much to them. Ideas are welcome.

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ale42 ◴[] No.42147596[source]
A small thing that might be useful: allow users to get a regular phone number to call. Most users probably won't need it, some will, and when they need it and there's no number, it's extremely frustrating for the (potential or current) customer.

Example: in most cases, I don't have a microphone or headset on my office desktop PC (don't need it, we don't do zooms), have very slow internet access on my smartphone (forget OnAir calling with it, and anyway it would be too much friction to reopen the same web page on it just to call), but have a very well working landline phone nearby.

One possibility you might think about is to get a VoIP number terminated at your server (and possibly a free 1-800-xxxx but those don't necessarily work from abroad), where people can call, enter a code displayed by the OnAir client in the web page (like an extension ID, but it might be random if there's a value in obliging people to come to the web page before calling, e.g. to limit spam calling), and once done they'd be connected as if they were calling through the web page. The limitation with this solution here is that you'd need a number for each country you want to support, as international calls easily get expensive, especially from mobile.

replies(1): >>42148035 #
1. paxys ◴[] No.42148035[source]
Why does that need to be part of the app? You can just put a phone number on your website next to the call button.
replies(3): >>42148096 #>>42148302 #>>42150737 #
2. yawnxyz ◴[] No.42148096[source]
actually I'm curious about how to get a business-related phone number like this? Does Google Voice do this, but also support round-robin, transcriptions, and webhooks?
replies(1): >>42148238 #
3. paxys ◴[] No.42148238[source]
You don't need a fancy service for this. Every phone operator supports it out of the box.
4. nutanc ◴[] No.42148302[source]
We actually do that. We have just released a web widget which maps to your current phone number IVR or voice bot flow. Have put a quick link on our web site at the bottom left corner, not clean ,but works :)

https://ozonetel.com/ind/

5. rexpop ◴[] No.42150737[source]
I believe in this example, OP is requesting a phone number dedicated to the onair coupling. So the "dedicated" number would serve as a prophylactic managed through onair.