[thinkingemote]

Could this be productised somehow? Would an investor be willing to invest in my startup which effectively un-blocks small companies from larger ones? It would do the leg work to compile the necessary information before contacting a real human.

I'll call it Support As A Service.

[exikyut]

I posited the interestingness of such an idea a couple months ago in a thread about app store blocks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25988410

IMHO, most emphatically *yes* - this is a completely unserved/unserviced area of the B2B and B2C markets.

I noted in the linked thread that such a service would likely start by leveraging individual contacts, and building a reputation for unwaveringly high signal.

It definitely does seem to me that the vacuum between corporate and customers represents a giant sleeper industry that fundamentally won't shift very quickly.

Which means you're unlikely to reach the usual core-problem-is-solved entrenchment/stagnation point that tends to happen when you ramp up on a complex-but-solve-once problem, then find yourself stuck with a bunch of intricate sausage machine bits that aren't doing anything...

[mcny]

Makes sense.

1. If someone works at a company, they can sign up on our website as a support agent.

2. We will only list companies with which we have an authenticated contact, maybe require people to verify they got our authentication token on their employee email?

3. When someone contacts us about an issue with a company we support, we verify the request is genuine. Perhaps charge a small fee to block spam. (This is the problematic part. How do we know a problem is genuine without asking for potentially confidential information?)

4. Add all vetted requests to a private channel that all the people who volunteered on step one. (Can we pay our volunteer support agents? How? Does paying make things worse? Maybe gamify this step and send our volunteers gifts?)

5. Monitor performance of support agents to avoid giving false hope to our customers.

[5dd83f0e]

Tell HN: SupportaaS not answering tickets.

[thinkingemote]

It's supportAaS all the way down!