{"id":52825,"date":"2016-03-15T21:54:20","date_gmt":"2016-03-15T20:54:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/e52.nl\/?p=52825"},"modified":"2016-03-15T21:54:20","modified_gmt":"2016-03-15T20:54:20","slug":"klets-the-business-to-client-chat-as-a-profit-centre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/en\/klets-the-business-to-client-chat-as-a-profit-centre\/","title":{"rendered":"Klets: the business-to-client chat as a profit centre"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eindhoven may be known to the outside world for\u00a0its emphasis on high-tech hardware, but a wide range of webtech startups is also part of the Brainport community. Companies that are focused on\u00a0software rather than complicated hardware. One of them, Klets<\/a>, is on its way to show the world\u00a0a product that might just win a place in between\u00a0whatsapp, slack and email.<\/p>\n

Klets – Dutch for “small talk” –\u00a0offers a solution for companies that need\u00a0to communicate regularly with their clients. A field previously covered\u00a0by phone and\u00a0mail, now\u00a0increasingly enabled by messaging: chat. Not only because chat\u00a0is more convenient, but also\u00a0because of the financial benefits. Klets\u00a0founders Egbert Teeselink (engineer) and Joshua Schoenaker (designer) have turned that concept into a startup. After an intensive program at Rockstart<\/a> in Amsterdam, the two and their team moved into BounceSpace<\/a> in Eindhoven.<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a>“We all know company-chat\u00a0in its function as\u00a0help desk, but if you do it right there’s much more to be gained, for companies as well as\u00a0for their customers,” says Teeselink. “Klets is in fact both messaging and<\/em> e-commerce. Companies that work with it, stop seeing their customer contacts as expenses,\u00a0and start using this\u00a0as a profit centre. Moreover, during a conversation with your client, you can do much more than just answering questions. Offer new services for example. Or retain customers who might otherwise drop out.”<\/p>\n

Of course any conversation could be held by phone or email. But both methods have disadvantages, says Teeselink. “Messaging is easy and\u00a0convenient, many companies have begun\u00a0to see that. But a chat through a pop-up, as is often the case,\u00a0that’s actually a thing of a previous generation. There are\u00a0smarter ways, and we show them in\u00a0Klets. Mark my words, within the next five years, all companies have become much more informal and personal with their customers, and we offer the means to get there. It’s also much more efficient: you can only start your next phone call after you finished your previous one, while it’s quite easy to be in four chats at the same time.”<\/p>\n

\"At<\/a>
At Rockstart’s Demo Day<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another great advantage in comparison\u00a0to the phone is that you don’t\u00a0depend on the presence of the other person. “You just drop your question whenever you like and get a signal when the answer is in,” says Teeselink. “And this really works. We recently received a nice example from a company that sells table tennis tables. A client of theirs was looking for a table that could stay outside, was foldable and on which some people might sit without the table falling apart. Not any ordinary table, you might say. They could not find one\u00a0in the brochure, so they dropped the demand at the company’s Klets. An hour later the\u00a0company\u00a0returned three suggestions, after which the deal was clinched in a few minutes. Just great.”<\/p>\n

Klets\u00a0is always accessible and\u00a0well designed, two essential factors in the choice of the customers, according to Schoenaker. “For example, you do not need a phone number to participate, as is the case\u00a0with whatsapp. Moreover, you don’t need to download any app, everything is web-based. When a chat is quiet for some time and is picked up again, the other person gets an alert and a link in his mail. On both ends\u00a0of the line, the same people who conducted the conversation\u00a0before will still be the ones present, even if there were weeks in between. And all this in the familiar\u00a0and recognizable design of the company.”<\/p>\n

\"PastedGraphic-1\"<\/a>Teeselink and\u00a0Schoenaker see the Eindhoven focus is on high-tech hardware and on design. “But we also see that it is difficult to connect the two nicely,” says Schoenaker. He laughs: “Something is needed between the High Tech Campus<\/a> and Strijp-S<\/a> and I do not mean De Hurk<\/a>. No seriously, I think the connection could come from webtech. Eindhoven also needs a serious software cluster.”<\/p>\n

Hosting Company Digital Ocean<\/a> (founded in New York but now active worldwide) is one of the larger companies that have embraced Klets. “This is a client to be proud of. They have a team of eight people for customer contacts and they operate\u00a024\/7. And they chose Klets. Wonderful!”<\/p>\n

Teeselink and Schoenaker both have been entrepreneurs since their teens, and they continued to do business during their education.\u00a0Currently the two\u00a0devote their time to the development of Klets\u00a0and finding new investors. “We have a pre-seed investment of about \u20ac100,000, thanks to the network around Rockstart. But now it’s important to collect seed funding. We have spoken with investors in Portugal, Belgium and France and this feels good. But especially\u00a0because we feel so at home in Eindhoven, it would be nice if we could also find local\u00a0investors.”<\/p>\n

Interested in funding Klets? Contact the founders directly through – of course – klets.com\/klets<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Klets\u00a0uses the freemium model. There is\u00a0a (limited) free version and an enhanced version for $49 per month. In addition, there are several tailor made options.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eindhoven may be known to the outside world for\u00a0its emphasis on high-tech hardware, but a wide range of webtech startups is also part of the Brainport community. Companies that are focused on\u00a0software rather than complicated hardware. One of them, Klets, is on its way to show the world\u00a0a product that might just win a place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1568,"featured_media":52719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[490,482,6069,825,484,6071,6073,827,829],"location":[],"article_type":[],"serie":[],"archives":[],"internal_archives":[],"reboot-archive":[],"class_list":["post-52825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sustainability-nl","tag-design-en","tag-economy","tag-egbert-teeselink-en","tag-high-tech-campus-en","tag-innovation","tag-joshua-schoenaker-en","tag-klets-en","tag-start-ups","tag-technology"],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":{"subtitle":"","text_display_homepage":false},"author_meta":{"display_name":"Bart Brouwers","author_link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/author\/brewbart\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Schermafbeelding-2016-03-14-om-22.54.00-1-300x215.png","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Sustainability<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Sustainability<\/span>"]},"tags":{"linked":["design<\/a>","economy<\/a>","Egbert Teeselink<\/a>","High Tech Campus<\/a>","innovation<\/a>","Joshua Schoenaker<\/a>","Klets<\/a>","start-ups<\/a>","technology<\/a>"],"unlinked":["design<\/span>","economy<\/span>","Egbert Teeselink<\/span>","High Tech Campus<\/span>","innovation<\/span>","Joshua Schoenaker<\/span>","Klets<\/span>","start-ups<\/span>","technology<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 10 years ago","modified":"Updated 10 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on March 15, 2016","modified":"Updated on March 15, 2016"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on March 15, 2016 9:54 pm","modified":"Updated on March 15, 2016 9:54 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"Team Klets","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52825"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=52825"},{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=52825"},{"taxonomy":"serie","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/serie?post=52825"},{"taxonomy":"archives","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/archives?post=52825"},{"taxonomy":"internal_archives","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/internal_archives?post=52825"},{"taxonomy":"reboot-archive","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/reboot-archive?post=52825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}