App targets young workers’ phone fears
Many young workers shy away from making phone calls in favour of email and texting, but a Kiwi entrepreneur says his phone app could change that.
San Francisco-based Jason Kerr co-founded his fifth company, phone management system Spoke, in 2015 after he saw his staff making increasingly fewer phone calls.
‘‘The one thing consistent in all my companies, of all sizes, was communication among employees was difficult and phone systems were a pain.’’
His phone app could stop millennials from feeling ‘‘aggressive and intimidating’’ when coldcalling other employees, Kerr said.
The app’s organisation-wide contact list showed staff names, who they reported to, plus their location and schedule, he said.
Kerr said it eliminated phonetag and workers’ unease about phoning a colleague they had never met in person, because that person’s introductory information was pre-loaded onto the app.
He said the features could help staff who work in different places empathise with each other.
‘‘In a two-minute phone call you can solve more problems than in 50 emails.’’
His app could simplify staff communication in the same way that Google’s Gmail simplified corporate email, he said.
Kerr said 336 companies had downloaded Spoke in its second trial phase and within four weeks it would be available to buy. A price was yet to be decided.
Kerr said New Zealand companies would probably pay ‘‘a few bucks’’ for a monthly subscription based on staff numbers.
His goal was for every New Zealand business to get rid of desk phones, he said. ‘‘Mobile is the future – just let employees use the one already in their pocket.’’
Kerr said future technology would unify all forms of communication because people preferred simplicity. ‘‘People are lazy. And when people are lazy, they like to adopt what is easy.’’
However, business innovation was not as simple, he said. ‘‘Innovation in itself is probably the striving for the difficult.’’
The Fairfax Media innovation series runs in partnership with Callaghan Innovation.