Sick of waiting on hold? Try lucyphone! Snag an account w/ code = "LUCYCOMB" | Hacker News Reader

Sick of waiting on hold? Try lucyphone! Snag an account w/ code = "LUCYCOMB"

lucyphone.com

37 pointstomeeo20 comments

Cool service! Too bad my power company hung up on lucyphone instead of doing whatever is needed for me to get a callback.

How is monetization planned? Targeted ads based on who is being called? Selling lucyphone service to companies to manage wait queues? All of the above?

On a related vein, why doesn't any company sell an asterisk add on that says "your menu choices have been noted.You will now be put on hold A csr will be w/ you in approximately X minutes. Alternatively our csr will call you back at $calling-number as in that same time frame -- press foo"

edit: if they do, how come no big companies buy such a thing? doesn't the cost of callback get absorbed by the reduction in idling "wait queue" lines?

Southwest Airlines has started doing optional callbacks. I hope it spreads.

Shaw (Canadian cable) does csr callbacks too. The software must be out there somewhere.

My credit union (Coast Capital) and telco (Telus) both do this.

T-Mobile in the US too.

Thanks for the feedback. Some companies are not as "lucyphone-friendly" as others. We are working on this as we get the word out. Your tweets on twitter can help us spread the word and make these companies more aware.

Why this problem has not been solved before is a mystery to us. It is a HUGE customer frustration. Some companies are using an internal solution called VirtualHold - Southwest, T-mobile, and other utility companies -- but Lucyphone solves the problem without any internal integration.

Cynical answer: by making you wait, they encourage many people to hang up, reducing volume at peak hours, and allowing the company to hire fewer CSRs.

Doesn't callback do a similar thing. Most people wouldn't mind a longer wait if it wasn't "on-hold" time. The frustration usually has more to do with "holding wastes my time" not "they aren't answering now"

Agreed. The value proposition for LucyPhone for business is potentially reduced support costs while improving the customer experience. Customers feel empowered when they invoke LucyPhone to hold their place in line. Once they are connected, the CSR has a happy customer ready to have their needs met, rather than an angry customer who has to vent for two minutes about the egregiously long hold time.

During the signup process it wasn't particularly obvious that I had to choose an account type. After I clicked continue my account seemed to be properly created however I couldn't continue through the registration process on screen because both my email and username were now taken.

On the bright side I love the idea, I wish I had then when I had to wait on hold with United for 1 1/2 hours over Christmas.

I had the same experience with the signup process.

Thanks for this constructive feedback! We will be tweaking the signup process to get rid of this issue.

I'd make it a little more clear in the video that you get a call back when Lucy gets a person. That's what I assumed would happen, but I had to dig to actually confirm it. Just add something to the last sentence of the video. "And Lucy does the waiting for you" ... "calling you back when she gets a human". Something along those lines.

Also, just wondering, what VoIP service/whatever are you using?

Damnit, I spent last week thinking about how something like this could be implemented technically and if there was any way to turn it into a business.

Congrats lucyphone!

Would love to chat and exchange ideas. It's validating to hear that others have been pondering a solution to this problem.

Never really got past the "Wouldn't this make sense? Why isn't anyone doing it phase?". Congrats on the launch/product though! Looks great.

What an incredibly good idea, I really hope they or someone else does this for the UK at some point!

Yeah - we've gotten some good feedback that the UK is even more notorious for poor customer service - that's a market we're eager to roll out to soon.

I've used this service in the past and it works great with Comcast and Verizon.

The Twitter feed is a brilliant touch.

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