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Tech startups are willing to display contact emails and click-to-chat buttons but not a direct phone line! Why is that?

Many tech startups are afraid to display a phone number on their website: will we be able to really answer all incoming calls? How do I deal with the fact that our team is small, very busy and working from various places? Will we lose a lot of time talking with customers?

As a consequence most of them let their website visitors get in touch through a standard contact@ address and at best a click-to-chat widget (like Olark).

We are not claiming that a business phone number is a silver bullet but in many cases it’s a very good way to interact with your customers. Don’t remove phone calls from your startup playbook for the wrong reasons.

5 cases for which a phone number makes a lot of sense

Customer discovery: It’s a great way to do “customer discovery” early on. Do yourself a favor and add a phone number on your homepage from day one. When you start, chances are high that your traffic is low so you don’t risk to be flooded with requests. And as explained here, talking to potential leads at the beginning of your business is the best way to really learn about their needs, their problems and how you can solve them.*

Support: people prefer phone support. You might not like phone calls, but your customers don’t care. As this study shows, phone is still ahead compared to email or click-to-chat when it comes to customer support satisfaction. This is especially true for important issues (downtimes, urgent questions…). You can make customers become ambassadors with a high-quality phone support.

Sales: phone sales are underrated. the purpose of a business phone number is not only to do support but also to do sales. A lot of startups find out that phone calls are great to convert leads into customers. Phone sales are increasingly becoming important in the SaaS industry, for example, so don’t hesitate to let a phone number visible to your visitors.

Customer service: phone is still useful for non tech-savvy people. Not everybody likes click-to-chat or wants to send an email to ‘eventually’ get an answer. A lot of people still think that a good old fashioned phone call is faster and more convenient. Which is true in many cases.

Building trust: a phone number is a great way to built trust. There are millions of websites out there from e-commerce websites to SaaS and more. In this jungle, building a name and trust is hard. A phone number is a great way to reassure the visitors of your page, even if they don’t call you.

We’re ourselves building a simple & smart business phone solution. If you want to be have set up your own virtual phone system, give us a call!

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Published on March 13, 2014.