Skype Prime: Your Personal Call Center
December 9th, 2007I came across an interesting feature while reinstalling Skype on my notebook computer - one called Skype Prime. This program is a (relatively) new addition to Skype’s family of services, and like most things Web 2.0, is still in beta. Apparently, the feature has been available since March this year, although I didn’t hear or see anything about it until today. This service uses the tag phrase, “Get paid for sharing your skills, or learn something new”. If you guessed paid phone services, you were quite right.
Skype presents you with an opportunity to earn (big bucks?) by letting you create your own personal ‘call center’. Anything that can be taught over the phone, is up for the offering. You could teach people a new language or narrate horoscopes, while charging them a fee (either per-minute, or a one-off charge). People who call in to avail of your services, will need to use their Skype credit to make payments - the minimum per-minute fee for any service is €0.10 (although that could possibly drop further in the future, as people start seeing greater value in having or providing such a service online, instead of setting up toll-access lines the conventional way).
Just a little online investigation regarding the marketability of this program has me convinced of its value. People are already familiar with the concept of being charged for receiving answers to their questions and problems online (through the popular Yahoo! Answers marketplace). I can easily see someone add the sentence “Call me on Skype if you need additional help with installing your new router (for example)” to their Yahoo! answer.
All this has me thinking.. how clichéd would it be to set up my own personal tech support line as an experiment? Riiight, an Indian guy on the line here on Skype too? At least I’d be charging less than your ‘friendly neighborhood‘ Geek Squad. Thank you, come again.
