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Hmm. 37signals is in an interesting position that offering phone chats is actually a feature not a bugfix. Although the point is to ask the CEO stuff about 37signals, there's a big perspective factor going on here.

At my startup, Ramamia, we've always been offering phone support 24/7. Through our mobiles. It doesn't matter that half of our userbase is in India and the optimal time for them is snoozing time for us (well, okay, snoozing time for my co-founder, seeing that it is 4am and I'm writing this), but I always felt it would help our sales conversions.

Interestingly, 37signals posted about why they didn't offer phone support last year: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1161-why-would-you-want-to-ca...



I could imagine that getting very intense. I would be interested to know roughly how many calls you receive. Do you use your personal mobile or do you have a dedicated number?

Although I like the idea of the personal touch and always being there for your customers I'm not sure I could, or would want, to be available 24/7. If I ever get the prototype out the door I had considered using twilio to set up a call system. The idea being it could go straight to voicemail when I really want to sleep. Do you just turn your mobiles off during the night?


Fortunately, we're still in beta (here comes the buzzword heckling) so call volume isn't bad. My number is being funneled through Google Voice to my personal mobile, so I can send it straight to voicemail configured on certain hours, but I don't sleep much anyway.

I looked into Twilio too and tried them out. Their recording and text-to-speech system is really cool. I looked into using http://grasshopper.com which is what 37signals is using, and a more automated solution.

> Although I like the idea of the personal touch and always being there for your customers

I think we too have a special case going on here. Ramamia helps people share photos, videos, and whatnot within their family, so that personal touch might tip the scale when it comes to conversions. It can't hurt for conversions, but it might get really hard to keep up with, but at that point, it's like a server crashing under traffic: a blessing in disguise.




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