Show HN: Empathize – manage user conversations easily
Ok Emphathize seems like something that could possibly be useful to me, I&#x27;m trying to do a startup, and I&#x27;m planning to contact some people who signed up for some software I&#x27;m developing, but then abandoned it. So I think I&#x27;m your target audience.<p>First: This doesn&#x27;t tell me much: &quot;Schedule customer conversations with ease.&quot;
The next line though, makes me intrigued :-) (i.e. <i>&quot;Everyone says you should talk to your customers. Our software makes it painless.&quot;</i>)<p>What about a shorter &amp; simpler headline like &quot;Talk with your customers. Our software helps you do that.&quot;<p>&quot;See a sample email&quot; — good idea, I wonder how to write such emais in a good way. I click &quot;Get sample email&quot;, before scrolling down &amp; reading more.<p>Ok here&#x27;s the email I got.<p><pre><code>    David from Empathize wants to speak to you!
    We would love to hear what you think about our product over a 30 minute phone call.

</code></pre>
To be honest, my reaction to this is &quot;Gaahhh! They think I have 30 minutes of my time to spare, to help them? Never going to happen.&quot;<p>From my perspective, as someone who gets this email, if you want me to <i>work</i> for you for 30 minutes, you need to provide some compensation. Like $30. Or giving me your service for free for 6 months.<p>Anyway I click &quot;Pick time&quot; to test what&#x27;ll happen ...<p>About the &quot;Please select a time&quot; page:<p>Which time zone? 12:00PM could be 02:00 AM to me, for all I know :-)<p>I feel slightly frustrated because the schedule seems adjusted for what&#x27;s good for <i>you</i>, not for what&#x27;s a good time for <i>me</i> (I now being the one who will give feedback to the company). If you really want my feedback, then you should let me pick any time I want 24 o&#x27;clock, and then adjust your schedule.<p>(If you pay me $$$$ then it&#x27;s OK though if I need to adjust to your schedule.)<p>UX problem: After selecting a time, I clicked `[ &gt; ]` instead of Submit, and didn&#x27;t immediately undrestand what then happened.<p>I think: 1) Change from just `[ &gt; ]` to `[ &gt; next day ]` to make it clear what those buttons do. And 2) Make the submit button look more like a button, instead of like a footer, by making it narrower, maybe 2-3x as wide as the Submit text (but not as wide as the page).<p>Ok I click Submit. And see the text &quot;Please complete all items above&quot;. What? Ok ... after a while I understand I need to fill in my phone number...<p>...Somehow make it more obvious that I need to type my phone number above. Hmm, interesting that I totally didn&#x27;t see the phone number input. In retrospect, it looks as if it ought to be easy to notice.<p>...Maybe the problem is that everything is in bright gray — looks like not-importrant-secondary-stuff. Instead, what grabbed my attention was the large calendar in the middle, and that&#x27;s where I started.<p>Ok I got to &quot;Thanks! The call has been scheduled.&quot;<p>I&#x27;m looking now in my Google Calendar, but don&#x27;t see any appointment there yet. Of course, since I haven&#x27;t signed up. I suppose maybe only the company&#x27;s staff will get their calendars updated.<p>---<p>I look at &quot;How it works&quot;, and find: &quot;We automatically handle giftcards ...&quot; — how do you do that?<p>To me that seems like crucial for getting someone to answer a phone call. What about including a gift card, in the &quot;Get sample email&quot; demo?<p>I look at &quot;What makes us special&quot;, and &quot;Email templates that work&quot; — I would want to see some of those email templates; I&#x27;ll be sending similar emails myself soon some day.<p>I would want the option to give <i>money</i> as &quot;thanks&quot; to the customer, not only a gift card.<p>Curious about pricing.<p>From what I&#x27;ve seen this far, of Emphatize, I&#x27;d actually prefer writing my own emails, and asking for feedback <i>in text</i> via email instead — I&#x27;m thinking people might have time to reply with an email to an email ... but not for a 30 min phone call. Also, if I get feedback in text, I can just copy-paste it into a todo document (rather than having to listen to a phone call and take notes myself).<p>Can I ask how did you come up with the idea to build Emphathize?<p>Have you validated that a talk-with-your-customers service is something companies are actually looking for? What if maybe they (like me) prefer asking for &amp; getting feedback via mail instead? Or maybe they use some customer-relationships-management system that already has get-feedback functionality built-in?<p>Maybe there are more &quot;Talk with your customers&quot; stuff that you can expand Emphatize to include? The concept of a company that helps other companies talk with their customers, seems like something that could actually work. But I&#x27;m hesitant right now about if the service you provide, is enough, for companies to get interseted.<p>What about contacting some different companies &#x2F; startups, and talking with them about how they do when talking with their customers, and what they might need &#x2F; want from you? Then maybe good to first read the available-for-free-online chapters in this book: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.startupwerkboek.nl&#x2F;startupcenter&#x2F;Momtest.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.startupwerkboek.nl&#x2F;startupcenter&#x2F;Momtest.pdf</a> (The Mom Test). It&#x27;s about finding out if people are truly &amp; honestly interested in the things one wants to build. —Maybe you&#x27;ll come up with more useful features, or re-focus completely to something else.<p>Best wishes anyway.