Automating Customer Service at a Startup

I found the title a little misleading. You're not automating customer service - which is almost always a terrible idea, particularly for small companies - but looking for ways to make yourself available to customers. The answers and service still come from humans, and that's exactly as it should be.

Twilio has a gaping gap in their service: there should be some very simple/easy out of the box solutions like "voice mail system" that you can then hook into with your own custom stuff. Not simple as in hack together a bit of PHP, simple as in click a few things on a web page.

As a small business, I really need a simple voicemail system, but don't need their programmable stuff. Yet. But it's cool enough that I suppose I'd go for them over others just to have it available if I want it in the future, if I got the simple voicemail system for a reasonable price.

I also tried Grasshopper, but their site barfed on my (very standard, plain) credit card.

I was surprised to see that you are using the native Zendesk chat and feedback. I think you mentioned you are on the $24/mos plan? I'm pretty sure this feature is included.

In my experience, the simpler the deployment, the easier it is to focus on what really matters - in this case, providing great customer service. You could easily do away with the third party chat tool and save a few bucks and eliminate any costs associated with supporting the integration.

just a thought... :)

Directing calls to a SIP client -- softphone or hardphone -- ought to be much cheaper, on the order of free to 3 cents/minute depending on how you arrange it.