Show HN: Talking to your customers made easy.

For some reason, the text in the original display doesn't show, that's why this comment here should substitute:<p>Dear Hackers and founders,<p>I am working on a startup which aims to make customer development easier, faster and perhaps lazier. We all know how important it is to talk to customers, GainGeek (<a href="http://gaingeek.com" rel="nofollow">http://gaingeek.com</a>) makes this process easier.<p>My hope is that this app will resonate with all those following Eric Ries's Lean startup and Steve Blank's customer development strategy. I thought it would be a great idea to submit my idea to the eyes of the most critical crowd I know. Please let me know what you think.<p>Cheers, Edo.<p>PS: Some will note that this app could be intrusive. My bet is that the benefit of talking to customers will outweigh this disadvantage.

Paraphrased from a non-technical user I talked to recently:<p>"I can browse &#38; evaluate services on the web more effectively and at leisure as there is no implicit pressure from a salesperson."<p>I predict it would lead to a lot of swift customer exits.

I like the idea, but I wonder how effective it would be and how many visitors would freak out and leave with a negative experience. A negative response is my immediate fear in terms of putting this on my own site. Some figures would be good once you have them.<p>Also, I'd lose the mouseovers. I was peering into the images trying to see the backgrounds and didn't realise that there was a mouseover until I'd finished - and at first it seemed like the images were changing randomly or on a timer or something.

So, this is basically Olark (a YC company). We use Olark and are happy with them.

I think this would work well, provided the users you target are the early-adopter/evangelist-type people (like us on HN). However, use this on someone like my girlfriend or my mom while they're on your site, and they'd probably freak out and leave.