What to do when your users ask you to "hop on a call"?

Hey Harry, cool site! A few ideas on this:

• Do you have a plan for monetization? Is the free part of the site a leadgen to that? If so, you can hijack these conversations into customer discovery for the paid-for part of the site
• Are these requests getting more frequent? If so, you might consider dropping a paypal $hourly_rate -> calendly pipeline, and funneling these requests through that for short service-like engagements.
• In any other case, the answer is no, or "ask via email", "ask it on forums", or other scalable content generation strategy at best. Specifically be aware, there exists an entitled subset of customers, who exploit any free goodwill offered into taking as much more as they can. I found those specific people to be the least monetizable, and most obnoxious to serve, and established a strict nope around them. If the funneled questions are interesting, I'd use that as an opportunity for further content development.

I'd ask them what they want to talk about. Qualify whether it is worth your time or whether it is something you could just help out in a different way. Sometimes people don't realise these things are a time sink.

I personally hate calls and avoid them as much as possible :D

Also, reply and screen them. Get some context.

You can ask them if they can summarize what they hope to accomplish on the call.

I think there's a lot of brainstorming you could do for this problem but I definitely think its a good problem to have 😊. I think redirecting them to a forum is a good idea as it will give your users 1) answers to problems there facing and 2) more content ,which might translate to increased usage of the app. Also you might see other users starting to answer the questions at some point

Whoa! This reeks of billable work! Not great when trying to scale but just give them an hourly rate!

Make up a somewhat ridiculous number and quote them.

Worst case they say no at first but that doesn’t mean they won’t say yes later. Best case you can get paid, get feedback, and iterate the main product based on their questions. Maybe there’s and easy question you can answer for tons of other visitors who aren’t calling.

Generally one vocal customer can represent several quiet ones.

I think the forum idea is brilliant.

• Provides scalable advice
• Good for SEO
• You get insight on what people need the most. This could inform future consulting work

99% of the time in my case, when someone messages me asking to "hop on a call" it's them trying to sell me something.

Take the calls, but use them as customer interviews and not as consulting. Before making the calls, frame them as you taking the time to learn more about their needs and thank them for taking the time to tell you about their experiences.

You can then use this information to build out your product or, as others have suggested, to charge for more consulting.

I’d agree to a handful, timeboxed so you don’t spend ages on a particular call for free. This could give you some new insights. Could lead to new connections, human or cognitive or could lead paid work etc.

I'd echo the suggestions about charging for consultations. Make the consultation fee high enough to motivate you to "jump on the call". It will reduce the number of requests, and drive profitable customers your way.

Adding a discord comments section / forum would be a great way to build additional traffic and get a community going.

Love your product, great job!