San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) November 27, 2013
Haptik, a San Francisco based start up that is building mobile applications to enable customer support over messaging, today announced their first product Device Help, an app to chat with experts for tech support for smartphones, tablets, computers and consoles. The app is available in the US iOS App Store today, and will be on Android within the next 48 hours, in time for Black Friday and the holiday season during when tech support requests are at peak. It is enabling help across 15 major consumer electronics companies such as Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Dell, HTC, LG, Lenovo, HP and others.
With Device Help, users can pick a company, send a message, and an expert will respond back to them within minutes if not seconds. Its like "texting" a friend, but instead specifically for tech support. These "experts" are people who have worked at these companies before or know them inside out having used their products extensively. Some of them are directly employed by Haptik whereas others are doing it just to help and share their knowledge.
"Its 2013, we are talking about flying cars and 3D printing, but the most basic need - Customer Support - continues to be a huge pain point," said Aakrit Vaish, CEO of Haptik, the company he founded earlier this year with long time friend Swapan Rajdev, who takes the CTO role. "The asynchronous nature of mobile messaging could turn out to be the ideal channel to finally solve this problem. With Device Help, we are focusing on the biggest area of support and connecting users with people who actually know their stuff."
According to IDC, the worldwide customer support market is estimated to be $200 billion which includes the amount companies spend on call centers, social media and online chat. US consumers make about 43 billion support related calls every year, and another 2 billion tweets. Tech support makes up about a third of it.
Device Help is currently totally free for unlimited usage. The company plans to make money by providing premium support services to users of the app, as well as charging companies so they can directly connect with their users. "There is such a big need on both sides of the table: users struggle to find support, and companies continue to spend huge amounts of money on call centers," says Vaish, who before this ran global business ops for Flurry, the mobile analytics and advertising company. "We want to be the platform that connects them seamlessly on mobile, and create a win-win situation for everyone involved."
Other features of the app include contact information for these companies such as phone number, email address, etc. when users want to directly reach out to them. It also shows a list of popular and trending questions for each company, as well as the ability to message a generic handle in case users need help with a company that is not on the list.
Device Help is currently only available in the US, and will be available in other markets over the next few weeks. The company has plans to expand to other verticals such as airlines and carriers, but for now are focused on solving the tech support problem.
