

Dear startups, stop being afraid to show a phone number on your website - mvaxelaire
http://blog.aircall.io/post/79448368657/dear-startups-stop-being-afraid-to-show-a-phone-number

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robhawkes
A lot of the reason why a phone number isn't used is because of the
unpredictable and immediate nature that comes with that channel of
communication. Not every company has enough people or time to be constantly
distracted by phone calls. That plus society has taught us that a ringing
phone must be answered if you're around or it is considered rude, whereas an
email can be left for a while, digested, and replied to at a later point in
time without being rude. More simply, I can answer many more emails, more
accurately than the time it takes to handle an unknown, untriaged phone call
that will likely require another call or email to followup the initial
conversation anyway.

That being said. For those that need a phone number, this is a nice-looking
service! :)

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niol1
A phone call is by definition a conversation. With emails, you need many of
them to create a conversation so you will probably not get the shit done with
one email. With a phone call at the time you hang up, it's done.

~~~
esw
In my experience, most support calls are not conversations.

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Ryel
Why don't we list our phone numbers?

Because our company doesnt pay engineers 6 figures to answer support calls.

 _edit_ =

but your product looks awesome :)

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liamgooding
Agree with this on many levels, however:

* Right now (as with many startups) we don't have the bandwidth to take out a 30 minute gap to speak with an interested customer - even if we wanted to! We just physically don't have enough people and can't hire fast enough already

* The cost of senior developers doesn't work for support or sales calls. And we don't want to have junior developers on the team this early because of the management overhead

* Talking on the phone _effectively_ and _efficiently_ requires a whole different skillset to technical, and it comes with experience and training

* The temptation is to outsource call handling in the early days, but from first hand experience, I know how easily these sub-par 'virtual assistants' can kill your brand as an educated customer will quickly see through the veil of BS that these sort of people put up. This one is a total no-no for tech startups. If there was a virtual assistant who specifically worked with tech startups, and had great product knowledge across the industry and could speak the language, now THAT I would pay for

* The prices and margins we're talking about don't always make sense for a sales call. How can I justify a 1 hour sales call on a $9 /mo subscription service? Forgetting all customer acquisition costs, hosting costs etc. I'd have to keep that user for 10 months just to break even on that very first phone call

I personally think the different business model of SaaS means traditional
sales methods like phone calls where the customer decides the time of the call
just don't work. One-to-many methods like webinars and screencasts, and pre-
scheduled Skype calls for BIG leads, are the only things that make sense.

For support via phone, that's something which we CAN accommodate but as an
upsell incentive. For example, on our $299+ plan, yeah sure you get a private
support number, because I can justify the $90 per hour it costs for that
engineer to speak with you.

Sorry to disagree on as many points as I'd agree on. However, I'd STRONGLY
suggest looking into the "Tech Startup Friendly Call Answering" service with
your Beta users as a possible pivot. An end-to-end solution, rather than a
sexy PBX solution, would catapult the relevance of this to startups in my
opinion and puts you as a market leader rather than in a market with 10+
strong competitiors

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actionscripted
Says the business in the business of business calls.

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aggronn
You know what I miss for instant support? IRC. It combines with instant
gratification of phone calls with the crowd-support of forums or community
support portals.

IRC obviously isn't mainstream and lacks features that some other systems
have, but whenever I'm working on something and want a quick question answered
that I can't get via google, I look for an IRC channel first.

~~~
orliesaurus
A lot of services(slack,hipchat) are nowadays allowing guest-joins; basically
it's like IRC, but with only channels(public , private) for your
team/customers.

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sahaskatta
I saw AirCall popup ProductHunt a few days ago. Any chance I could ask for an
early-invite? We're using a big of a hacked-together Twilio + Google Voice
solution right now to route calls to the right employee at the moment.

~~~
orliesaurus
[https://twitter.com/OlivierPailhes](https://twitter.com/OlivierPailhes) is
the CEO and he's super nice, get in touch with him and he'll give you early
access very likely!

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
kind of interesting you posted his twitter instead of his phone number.

~~~
olivierpailhes
Reach me out on +1 646 776 5948 (to be honest you may reach me or cascade to
our CTO or any available member of team - but all will be happy to talk to
you)

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loladesoto
i set up a google voice # for sales and support inquiries, which gets routed
to my cell phone.

if anyone cares enough to want to speak with a company rep, as the CEO i'm
more than happy to be that person. in fact i should be, for as long as i
possibly can. you need to know your customers, and how else can you
effectively train your sales and support reps?

anecdotally: Adora Cheung learned the cleaning biz as a cleaner. after raising
$30M, she posed as a secret cleaner on Thanksgiving as a way of expressing
gratitude. literally got her hands dirty. ;>

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fiatpandas
The profile of the phone in the AirCall icon looks really unergonomic and
disturbing to me. It's like the illustrator has never held an old-school phone
before

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mindcrime
Way ahead of you.

[http://www.fogbeam.com/contact.html](http://www.fogbeam.com/contact.html)

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fatbat
I know it is still beta but did not see these information on the main site.
Which 40 countries? Estimated pricing?

~~~
olivierpailhes
we cover most OECD countries, South & Latam americas, Pacific area and some in
Africa/middle east. For details and pricing, the best is to register to our
beta on [http://aircall.io](http://aircall.io). I'll get you onboard and give
you more details when you've seen our product!

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spitfire
It's cool that they have a phone number on their website. But how about
pricing and contact email as well?

~~~
olivierpailhes
register to our beta to get in touch with me or mail me olivier@aircall.io.
We're still finetuning our pricing but i'll give you details when you're on
board :-)

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superlucy
awesome build

