Show HN: Hipmob for iPhone - add live chat to your iPhone app

hipmob.com

11 points·kunle··4 comments

The functionality is handy, but it is down to the execution of each app developer to decide if this goes the annoying hosting-provider-chat-with-our-advisor thing, or genuine customer/prospect management. There's definitely a gap in the market in real time customer conversations on mobile, which is counter-intuitive of everything being more immediate on the mobile. Integrating with a click-to-call VOIP feature would be neat. Even if it is just a Skype implementation.

> There's definitely a gap in the market in real time customer conversations on mobile

Agreed. We realized this when we users would chat with us live via our site(s), and solving their problem right away would bring them real pleasure. There's currently no way to do this on mobile (outside of a phone call), and we're working on a click-to-call solution like you've mentioned.

The bigger barrier is that a lot of mobile developers are afraid of opening the floodgates - time spent talking to users, is not time spent writing code. We believe that ultimately though, as more folks sell stuff through apps, and start thinking of users as "customers" providing live support this way (similar to how a lot of ecommerce sites on the web have live & phone support) will become more mainstream.

As long as big companies are adopting mobile as a service channel, there will be a market for click to call. Their army of reps in a low cost location somewhere won't worry about floodgates opening. It will take you into the large enterprise space where the big bucks are. Good luck!

We released Android a couple weeks back and we're already seeing as many conversations come in through the app, as we see through the web. We're releasing the iPhone app today, and more stuff in the coming weeks!

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