GoGoGrandparent helps seniors without smartphones
TORRANCE, Calif. — Don’t be fooled by her age or her not-so-smart flip phone. Eightyfive-year-old Betty Lou Luce is spurring a technology movement that’s spreading from bridge clubs to retirement homes across Southern California.
Thanks to a phone service called GoGoGrandparent, Luce, who lives in this Los Angeles-area city, is defying the stereotypes associated with older adults, using the same on-demand mobile apps as smartphonesavvy millennials and boomers. She takes Uber rides to and from Coco’s Bakery and doctor appointments. She gets meals and groceries delivered by trendy, give-it-to-me-now apps such as Munchery, Postmates and Instacart.
And, perhaps best of all, there’s no app required. GoGoGrandparent, created by Luce’s 24-year-old grandson Justin Boogaard, is just a hotline.
Luce, and now her social circle and their acquaintances, call a phone number and select from a simple menu of automated choices: Press 1 for an Uber ride, 2 for a return trip, 3 to order a meal, 4 to get groceries delivered and 5 for all other delivery options. GoGoGrandparent handles the rest.
“My grandma is the kingpin of Torrance and when she likes something, everybody hears about it,” Boogaard said.
Luce’s word-of-mouth referral system has thus far resulted in hundreds of users. GoGoGrandparent first got rolling at the beginning of the year. Now, the number of calls to the hotline is increasing by 20 percent every week. The nascent, self-funded company doesn’t charge callers additional service fees, but it is starting to eke out revenue from affiliate relationships with Uber and other partners.
The service uses a custombuilt automated system to manage all Uber ride requests. For now, everything else gets routed to a human operator who places orders on behalf of callers, who are, on average, around 85 years of age. Boogaard and his business partner, David Lung, are still toying with the right ageappropriate options to make sure their older clients can get what they want without too much hassle.
Because ease of use is paramount.
“When I need (a ride), I just dial the telephone number and press 1,” said Rose Iacono, 90, who recently relocated from her home to a retirement community. “When I’m ready to come home, I dial the number and press 2, and they already know where I am. It’s really an ideal situation for me. Being without a car, it’s a nice alternative.”
GoGoGrandparent is a go-between, porting the convenience introduced by the burgeoning realm of on-demand apps (where anything you want is usually available in an hour or less) to seniors without smartphones who have no way to interface with handy new tools.
Fully 70 percent of Americans age 65 and older do not own a smartphone, according to the Pew Research Center. Yet older adults, 78 percent of whom do have access to old-fashioned cellphones, can benefit from speedy delivery and ride services just as much, if not more so, than youngsters.
“Technology is really critical for older people, especially in terms of help and assistance,” said Dilip Jeste, M.D., senior associate dean for healthy aging and senior care at the University of California at San Diego. “The number of older people is increasing, but care is declining. That care can only be filled, in large part, by technology.”
Yet seniors often are overlooked by technology companies. “That’s a mistake,” Jeste said. And not just because there is a need for tools to assist the increasing population of elderly folks who prefer “aging in place” — staying in their own homes, safely and independently. There’s a real financial incentive as well.
Laurie Orlov, founder of the Aging in Place Technology Watch and a former analyst at Forrester Research, estimates that the senior tech market will become a $20 billion industry by 2020. Semico Research forecasts that companies creating technologies for the stay-at-home movement will generate more than $30 billion in revenue by 2017.
But for all that GoGoGrandparent can do to support independent older adults, the service has a glaring shortcoming.
GoGoGrandparent doesn’t actually teach older adults how to use smartphones, tablets or the Internet. These are far more pressing needs for seniors, Orlov said. After all, the Internet is replete with information and tools — take the tech training program AARP TEK — that can better the lives of older adults.
“It’s a great thing he’s done in a fairly niche view of the need,” she said. “But he needs to carry it a step forward.”
Callers should be directed to Internet educational resources, Orlov suggested.
Boogaard knows there’s more to be done.
After living with his grandmother for two years and witnessing the pros and cons of aging, he has found his best muse yet: Betty Lou Luce.
“I’ve realized that I am the definition of a family boy who is making it work for him. I’m just going to keep going with that,” he said. “There is so much opportunity in this space and there are not many people focusing on it.”