Show HN: Talking to your customers made easy. | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Talking to your customers made easy.

gaingeek.com

24 pointsedo19 comments

Dear Hackers and founders,

I am working on a startup which aims to make customer development easier, faster and perhaps lazier. We all know how important it is to talk to customers, GainGeek (http://gaingeek.com) makes this process easier.

My hope is that this app will resonate with all those following Eric Ries's Lean startup and Steve Blank's customer development strategy. I thought it would be a great idea to submit my idea to the eyes of the most critical crowd I know. Please let me know what you think.

Cheers, Edo.

PS: Some will note that this app could be intrusive. My bet is that the benefit of talking to customers will outweigh this disadvantage.

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For some reason, the text in the original display doesn't show, that's why this comment here should substitute:

Dear Hackers and founders,

Cheers, Edo.

PS: Some will note that this app could be intrusive. My bet is that the benefit of talking to customers will outweigh this disadvantage.

For some reason, the text in the original display doesn't show, that's why this comment here should substitute:

This is because you can either post a link or a text. I think this was to avoid people trying to get there comment on a prominent position.

Ah, didn't know that. Strange that the interface allows me to write all that text, when it won't show anyway.

Paraphrased from a non-technical user I talked to recently:

"I can browse & evaluate services on the web more effectively and at leisure as there is no implicit pressure from a salesperson."

I predict it would lead to a lot of swift customer exits.

Interesting indeed. Would the disadvantages, especially in early startups that have no traction yet anyway, outweigh the benefits? That is: being able to go through the customer development cycle quicker, so you can pivot faster.

I like the idea, but I wonder how effective it would be and how many visitors would freak out and leave with a negative experience. A negative response is my immediate fear in terms of putting this on my own site. Some figures would be good once you have them.

Also, I'd lose the mouseovers. I was peering into the images trying to see the backgrounds and didn't realise that there was a mouseover until I'd finished - and at first it seemed like the images were changing randomly or on a timer or something.

So, this is basically Olark (a YC company). We use Olark and are happy with them.

We know of Olark and it's a great tool. No doubt.

But this would really focus on customer development. So apart from chat one can expect more tools geared towards measuring user sentiment.

Tell me more about how your tool focuses on customer development? I'm very interested.

There are a lot of ideas, a few of them being:

- When you release a new feature/service/product, you'll get the possibility to open a thread in which you can store conversations/feedback/poll-results/usage data on that particular feature.

- The ability to rate conversations on a positive/negative scale so you can quantify user sentiment. (Only interesting with large customer development groups).

- Analytics integration so you can put the quantitative data and the qualitative data together.

I'm not sure if this is a good idea. But I do know that I'm personally still looking for something really simple to make customer development a breeze. This might be an interesting direction to start with.

Cheers, E.

Customer Dev talks about stating assumptions - you should definitely have the ability to quantify the results of the assumption validation process. I think if you combine this with A/B testing you have a very powerful tool on your hands.

I was hoping this would be an alternative to Olark. They seem like a cool company but I have constant connection problems with them. I haven't used them long enough to figure out the issue, so it might not be their fault.

Is there any way you could have a 'help desk only' interface? I'd be scared to pop out a dialog at some unsuspecting visitor. I imagine my OCD would kick in and I'd alienate every person I had time to.

Ofcourse we can look into that; the interface that is, not your OCD ;-).

Haha. Thanks.

I've been using Olark for a few years now, and I've never had any connection problems (disclaimer: I've known the Olark guys since they worked here in Ann Arbor before going to YC).

I'd to learn more about the issues you experienced, could you email me directly at benc@olark.com?

-Ben

Hey Ben thanks. I just sent you a mail.

I think this would work well, provided the users you target are the early-adopter/evangelist-type people (like us on HN). However, use this on someone like my girlfriend or my mom while they're on your site, and they'd probably freak out and leave.

Indeed, it appears similar to the fake facebook chat popups on porn and spam sites. I would have difficulty believing there was a real person behind it.

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