The Eindhoven start-up Klets.com has successfully shifted their focus to TalkJS, a component for websites which allows users to communicate with each other. There are now 40 companies who are using the software, including the major American greeting card company, Hallmark.
Klets.com is a web application which allows companies to communicate with clients. But there was limited growth with this, and many companies were asking for another product. “We were often talking to internet entrepreneurs who had a social site or web shop. We tried to sell Klets.com to them, but they were often already teamed up with a competitor. What these companies lacked was a way in which to put their users in contact with each other”, explains Egbert Teeselink, one of the founders of TalkJS.
When they were being asked this question more often, they checked if companies were already offering this. As it turned out, some do provide a similar service, but it is not complete and requires a lot of programming.
The switch from Klets.com to TalkJS was made quickly, as the functions are not very different from each other. “We quickly converted the technology behind Klets.com into a product where two users can talk to each other on a site”, says Teeselink. We went online in November, and now we are working on further developing the platform, as it is not finished. In the future we would also like to integrate video calling. We would like to be the company where you just buy everything that has to do with communication.”
Where TalkJS is already being used, for example, is with a service to search for dog walkers. “As a company, do you want your users to get in touch with each other. For example, people who are looking for a dog walker can easily chat with someone who is offering this service. We make sure that we have an amazing and well-functioning chat feature built in a short time. What sets us apart from the competition is that we offer not only an extensive service, but also the user experience.”
The start-up wants to ride the current wave of outsourcing: “Where you used to see that each company had its own servers, you now see that everything is outsourced to companies that have more know-how. Now, large websites like AirBnB build their own chat functions, but we would also like to provide TalkJs to these kinds of companies. Then they can be more concerned with what their company is all about, rather than wasting money and time on their chat service.”
TalkJS was launched in November 2016. The name makes it clear that it is a JavaScript application which allows users to talk to each other. The switch has definitely been successful, according to Teeselink: “We are happy that we have acquired forty companies in a short space of time. When November marks a year of working on this, we would like to have a few hundred clients, preferably including several large companies.”
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