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.
Hope the market is mature now and products like this succeed. All the best.
And by "call" I mean direct, synchronous, real-time conversation. Whether literally a phone call, or an online voice or video call.
There is less ambiguity usually during a real conversation.
Conversations tend to resolve very quickly because in the span of five minutes we can go back and forth on multiple questions, get clarity and finalize how we want continue. Some things require this but not everything. There is a balance as with everything.
> nearly half [of gen z] admit that speaking on the phone makes them feel anxious (49 per cent)
> an awkward phone call is one of the top three things they would most want to avoid (42 per cent)
That being said I'm quite confident there is enough of a market that doesn't dread talking on the phone that this company could do very well for itself and its founders financial goals.
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https://www.commbank.com.au/articles/newsroom/2023/06/CBA-Mo...
Strangely, it seems like the world is becoming more like me over time. I tend to think of my preferred communication style as strange and awkward because that's what a lifetime of experience has taught me but the new generation seems to also prefer it.
Often we end up convinced we are on the same page when we aren't just because our communication is constrained (and accelerated) by social protocol. At least when it is written out you can go back and re-read or directly quote someone. In meetings I find myself constantly pointing out when someone has been fundamentally misunderstood in a way that aligns with the listener's existing beliefs/preferences, "oh, I think what Frank is saying might actually be the opposite of [your interpretation]?".
There are pros and cons to different forms of communication. Sometimes a call can help cut through layers of misunderstanding, but for more complex topics, often it's difficult to get a group of people to all be present enough to share genuine understanding. School is a great example of how ineffective this can be.
When I was young we had a landline at home and yes there were some telemarketing calls but they were not the majority. Most calls were from friends or family or legitimate other purposes. That's not how it is today, at least in my experience.
Part of it is that anything other than a local call used to cost money. So there was a financial disincentive to robo-call thousands of people hoping that you'd find one rube.
The problem runs the other direction as well. Friends in the US tell me that the local hospital no longer permits direct calls to rooms, on account of both robocalls and spams. It's now necessary to call through the operator.
This is a (slight) inconvenience to friends and family, and a considerable workload and staffing burden for the hospital.
I've been predicting the death of telephony, as in a universal direct-contact, single-directory (as in: everyone has an identifier which can be reached by any other party regardless of provider) for about a decade now. It's a death-by-a-thousand-cuts phenomenon, but increasingly it's difficult or impossible to reach specific individuals or organisations by phone. The issue isn't just landlines (used by a minority of households in many states, though some such as New York are apparently still above 50%, contrast < 20% throughout much of the central US), but all public switch telephone networks.
Expect a fragmentation to various online services (FB, WhatsApp, Google, Skype, Zoom), home-rolled networks, and those who just opt out fully.
I prefer in writing, because I always hope that when it eventually gets to a human, they can read the whole conversation and save a lot of time. Using voice, almost always, I have to repeat the information to each person as we go, and it's tiresome.
I wasn’t even convinced there was a working product after that.
So it goes both ways.