Why startups should use the phone | Hacker News Reader

Why startups should use the phone

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32 pointsanemitz21 comments

I think of the phone as one of the most valuable tools you can use during the unscalable part at the beginning of the startup.

To this day, a face to face meeting trumps all other forms of communication in sincerity and authenticity. If I'm willing to fly halfway around the world to meet you, it says a lot. Similarly, but to a lesser extent, a phone call means more than an email which means more than an SMS.

So yeah I think startups should use the phone, but I'm admittedly a bit biased since I'm so deep in the telecom industry.

Not sure why there's such backlash against the idea of calling customers. You signed up for a service. If you're at all serious, there's a good chance getting a call right away will either 1) help overcome some stumbling blocks with activation or, 2) leave you with a feeling of personal connection. Both are good things in my book.

But yes, of course, no one wants to get a used car salesman calling them and stuffing a sale down their throat. That's not what this post is advocating. But in case you're worried (or not serious about using the service) there's an easy way to avoid getting a call: don't enter a phone number (or at least a real one).

Not all of us get warm fuzzy feelings of personal connections from unsolicited marketing calls.

Sure, it'd be bad if it were a marketting call. No one wants to be called for an upsale.

But what if the call is just part of the onboarding process to answer your questions better than any FAQ could?

I'd still be irked that some "customer-centered" jackass thinks so little of my time that he'd call me in an attempt to play a game of 20 questions about what questions I might have.

Look, if I want to know about your product, I'll let you know. Read the last four words of the previous sentence again: I will let you know.

Ah, its my mistake for phrasing it as if the question was posed to you in particular. I meant it in a rhetorical sense... speaking about a general population.

On HN, we're entrepreneurs and ought not to care about outliers when it comes to making business decisions. If most people will benefit from a phone call, and those who don't benefit won't be too adversely impacted then I say.... make the call.

As with many things in life, what works for you may not work for everyone.

Some people don't even know what they want to know. In the words of that great poet, Donald Rumsfeld: "there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know." [1]

That said, here's something that works for most people when they get an unwanted call: "I don't want to talk about your product. Do not call me again. Have a nice day."

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns

I think the key thing is for there to be a reason behind the call (other than "we hope this will help conversions).

If you're early stage and doing customer development it makes sense because their input actually will be important to the direction of the product. If your product is complex, comes with a range of options and/or is very niche and high-value it makes sense because users feel your call actually might help them. If your ideal client is the VP Business Development or Marketing Manager and effective use of your product directly affects their bottom line they probably want to talk with you, and if you're selling a solution to a particular large enterprise problem there's probably someone whose job is talking to people like you.

On the other hand, if your typical customer is a mid-level software developer who can probably grok what your product does on the rare occasions they're likely to use it, they'll call you. And there's something quite dubious about most consumer products sold through cold calls.

Less intuitively, senior people within organizations (if you can reach them) are often much more willing to discuss in detail because they're used to being asked for feedback and seeing that feedback implemented, and making purchasing decisions isn't a painful process for them. Their career advancement has often been aided by their willingness to listen to people with useful suggestions too...

I received one of these type phone calls from a company who had recently purchased an antivirus company we are in contract with so they were sort of in startup phase.

We were having major issues so I was happy they had called out of the blue promising to fix after I explained (we had no support contact info after the acquisition, old numbers were just cut off with zero notice to existing customers). After a month of emails, conference calls, and remote sessions we wound up back at square one with a product that does not work.

The kicker: he tried to upsell us to their new SaaS antivirus after being unable to fix our problems! Then they stopped returning our calls/emails leaving us with a broken product we spent a lot of money on.

Bottom line is I'm no better off for them having followed the advice given here. I think they didn't care and that initial phone call was only a sales call.

Please never call me ever again, you are scum the same as pop up surveys on corporate websites. If I have a problem I will call you.

I was a bank teller in college -- we would call new account signups after one month of having signed up to double check that they got their debit card, checks, etc., just to make sure things were going ok.

People were blown away that we were doing this, and the ones that had something go wrong were really grateful we were proactive in helping them before they had even asked for it.

It was a quick 2-3 minute conversation, but really was extremely valuable in client retention.

Don't bother calling me unless I've explicitly opted in. Otherwise I'll be the first to cancel your service.

That's fair.

What we found especially in B2B is that when people decide to put in their phone number they are actually glad to have someone call and offer help.

I call users every day and never had someone be mad at me or cancel. Quite the opposite, many upgrade as a result of our interaction :)

I hate to be called, I prefer to receive an email and check it when I have time, yet many companies seem reluctant to use email and prefer to disturb me over the phone. Sadly for me I have ended up developing a (really) defensive stance, because most of the calls I receive are "spam".

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind receiving a call when something that really requires my attention happens.

Calling is definitely harder to scale than a simple email campaign, but the effects of calling are much better. I experienced it both as the prey and the hunter :) I think every startup should at least try it and then decide whether it's worth the effort to scale it.

I've had bad experience with company calling, namely, it was TechNet people. (I guess, that was more of customer retention, though.) But still, they demonstrated one of worst example of how to call their customer. For example, they would call me every other day until I respond, and they never left a single voice mail.

If you're going to call me... 1) If I don't take a call, leave a voice mail, telling me who you are, and leave a number I can actually call back, and 2) Don't check back on me after I already said no.

We call every sign-up, but only about 5% answers the call. While we leave a nice voicemail message, and offer a free setup session, very few users take us up on it. Almost none of the people that we leave a voicemail with call us back.

Are there are metrics available for companies that do this? So far I have not seen any increase in LTV from the people that we do reach.

How soon after signup do you call? 5% is definitely on the lower end of what I would expect if you're generally calling within an hour of signup. You can really blow someone's mind by calling them within a few minutes of signup. You're not looking to get them on the phone for more than a couple minutes -- just a quick, "hey how's it going..anything I can quickly help with...ok, great...if you have any questions go here or contact us like this..."

EDIT: signups outside of normal business hours are harder to call so it's OK to try and fit those in as best you can -- your success there will also depend on the signup's timezone.

We call the next day. I'll see what happens if we call within an hour. Good suggestion - thanks!

You don't even have to wait for the signup either - you can often get them on the phone after a well-written cold email. I run a marketplace for trips planned by locals (Tripzaar.com), and when we are recruiting locals, we try and get them on a call before they even sign up. Then once we get on a call, we'll actually listen to their problems, offer to help, then manually create their account for them. Not only does this get more people onto the site, but we get a considerably more loyal community as well. I've heard this "sign them up yourself" strategy work very well for quite a few other companies too.

It definitely won't scale, but we'd rather have a few people who really buy in than thousands who wouldn't feel comfortable dropping us a line with suggestions.

Depends on what the service is. I like it if Windows Azure calls me to see if they can help me with work. If I'm just trying out your social networking app and you call me, I will log out and delete your stuff because I don't want that sort of relationship with you.

If anyone plans on using this strategy for their start-up, I hope that they're explicit about it on their webpage. That way, I'll know which SaaS start-ups to avoid like the plague.

Not everyone is an extrovert.

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