Full Transcript
Troy Otillio:
-and right now it is a limited time, and it starts on the 25th, but the cards come in 30, 50, or 100 dollar increments or amounts, and can be applied to any Aira account, as long as you know the phone number.
Ryan Bresnahan.:
It’s definitely a thing where if you can think of it, there’s probably an agent who is an expert in it.
Jeff Thompson:
Please welcome Aira CEO Troy Otillio and Operations Manager Ryan Bresnahan.
Troy:
And it goes on and on—there’s Target, there’s now Walmart, there’s over I think 70,000 locations physically you can use Aira as a guest.
Jeff:
Access to information when you want it—any time, any day.
Troy:
A win-win—so if you’re a guest, you can refer someone, and if they sign up you both get a month free.
Jeff:
Connecting you to live agents through your phone’s camera to save you time and to be more efficient.
Troy:
You’re going to see a new feature coming out, let’s say within a month, that is really another kind of user-driven capability.
Jeff:
Introducing Aira gift cards, and how the five free minutes will work for you.
Serena Gilbert:
I love, Troy, that you just made Aira a verb- I don’t know if you caught that, you said if they were Aira-ing a lot-
Troy:
Oh, shoot, did I say it out loud?
Serena:
I love that, that’s going to trend.
Jeff:
So please welcome, from Aira, Troy Otillio and Ryan Bresnahan, and from Blind Abilities, Serena Gilbert, and myself, Jeff Thompson. We hope you enjoy.
Ryan:
Part of what makes us as a company who we are is this promise of sustainability—that we’re not here for the next six months, or year, or five years, that we are here as long as the community wants and uses us.
Troy:
Ultimately what we came out with is something that is sustainable. Starting on August 25th, we’re going to have the ability for you to know when you can make your next call, and it’s going to work like this.
Jeff:
Welcome to Blind Abilities, I’m Jeff Thompson, and in the studio with me is Serena Gilbert. Serena, how’re you doing?
Serena:
I’m doing very well, Jeff, how about yourself?
Jeff:
Good. Thanks for being here today, and we’ve got an exciting group of people in the studio. We’ve got the team from Aira—and Serena, you’re an Aira user as well as myself, but you have something special about your service.
Serena:
I am an Aira user, and I was lucky enough through a bit of advocacy to be able to have my employer, which is Vocational Rehabilitation here in Colorado sponsor that service for me so I can use it for the work that I do.
Jeff:
Well, that’s great. Well, there’s so many different areas, avenues that you can use Aira, because making your tasks more efficient in your everyday life, it’s information that’s right there but they give it to you by a trained agent that can help you out. So in the studio with us we have Operations Manager Ryan Bresnahan, how are you doing?
Ryan:
I’m doing great, Jeff, thanks, and thank you Serena as well.
Jeff:
You bet. We also have the CEO of Aira, and that’s Troy Otillio. How’re you doing, Troy?
Troy:
Hello everyone! I’m doing great, it’s Friday, I’m located here in San Diego, it’s a little warm, but even though we have COVID, our office is accessible from time to time and I’m actually in a nice air-conditioned office looking out at a little bit of the skyline of La Jolla, but it’s super great to be with you guys today, and thanks for having us on the show, and I’m looking forward to talking more.
Jeff:
Well, that’s great. You know, I saw your newsletter, there’s some great news out of Aira, let’s just kick it out with something that I saw a while ago, but now gift cards from Aira, that’s a great thing.
Troy:
Yeah, we’re always looking for the best way to package Aira, you know, there’s a lot of opinions out there on, like, what Aira should do, what we could do, and frankly, you know, I’m a big proponent, Aira’s always been known for working with our customers, it’s how it got started, right? The founder was Suman, and he conducted over 2000 trials and really got to know the audience before shaping the product, and Suman and I worked together the whole time, and I was the chief operating officer. Getting back to gift cards, this was a request that many folks have had, right? And right now it is a limited time, and it starts on the 25th, but the cards come in 30, 50, and 100 dollar increments or amounts, and can be applied to any Aira account, as long as you know the phone number. Ryan, I think you can check me here, but those gift cards, once you give them to someone or to yourself, those minutes don’t expire, right? You can use those this month, next month, or, you know, 12 months from now.
Ryan:
Absolutely. I’m going to just second that excitement here, you know, I manage the suggestions box from the agents, the agents are always listening to anything the explorers, guests are looking for, and I think that that’s probably the most requested thing that we’ve had in the last about five or six months, so it’s really good to see us finally getting to implement that, getting to bring, you know, what you’re asking for to the table.
Jeff:
Well, what a nice gift for anybody, like, doing a podcast to send out to people to make an offer. Even if you’re holding an event in one of your chapter meetings, to have giveaways, you know, like the 50-50 raffle that they always have, you know, you could give away, you know, Aira gift cards, because anybody can use it because it’s so easy to get joined up, you know, and like you said, use your phone number, to give these away to that person for a gift card, boom.
Serena:
I was just talking about this with Jeff, what, two days ago? Jeff and I have been spending way too much time together apparently, but I was really excited because one use case that I thought of is let’s say you have someone who’s going to visit a family member, and is heading through an airport that happens to not be an Aira access point. The relative or whoever they’re visiting could send them that gift card so that they know they can safely get through that airport and not have any stress about it and do it on their own time.
Ryan:
Another use case we’re hearing a lot about, you know, distance learning. Education’s been really disrupted—as an aside, my wife is a middle school math teacher, and she’s, you know, trying to deliver this information, you know, via Zoom, and Google Classroom, and it’s really challenging. We know- you know, over the summer, we did our distance learning offer, and whether it’s parents or students I think there’s a whole new environment that we’re getting accustomed to, working with new online tools, and also at the same time folks aren’t close to the resources they had, like they’re not going into the schools yet in most places, and so I think this is another place that, you know, a gift card could come into play, like you’ve got some student or parent of a student that’s trying to kick off the school year, and we know that there’s that initial learning curve and it’s a great way to kind of boost access to Aira.
Jeff:
Yeah, another thing I was thinking about when Serena and I were talking—counselors, like at Voc Rehabs, like if someone’s going to take a summer course, or they’re going to join up for classes, they could get monthly Aira cards, gift cards, to use, because it’s a lot cheaper than hiring a reader, and you can get it when you need it.
Troy:
Yeah.
Ryan:
Absolutely, and all you need is the phone number of the person you’re giving it to, associated with the Aira account and you’re good to go.
Troy:
Yeah. And Ryan, what do they do, they can call in? Or they can purchase online?
Ryan:
Yeah, calling in is probably going to be the fastest way.
Jeff:
There you go, and you can find that on Aira.io, on any web browser. Another thing, you’ve got some plans that are available to people, if someone’s ready to join up—if they’re not getting enough gift cards, and they want to take charge of their own experience with Aira? What are the plans like?
Troy:
Sure! The plan- you can, again, find these on the website. We used to have a lot of different plans, but what we learned is ultimately we’ve got to make it simple and easy to communicate. One thing I like to point out is well, maybe like some subscriptions, but unlike others, you can change your plan any month, so that’s one way we like to give flexibility is like, you can pick a plan, you can start a plan, it’s not the right size for you, you can change it one month and change it the other month. We consider our free, our guest plan as a plan, so, you know, the first one, just for everyone to know, Aira is free, you can download that app, you can use it at access locations, access offers, for your JAWS user, one of our most heavily used offers for free is, you know, you get stuck using JAWS, like, the computer reboots, it’s not working right, there’s an update, and Ryan could probably talk about a lot of those sessions, but we get a lot of those users who need access to JAWS, and there’s something in the way. And it goes on and on—there’s Target, there’s now Walmart, there’s over I think 70,000 locations physically you can use Aira as a guest. We also have our five minute free offer, and I’m sure we’ll talk about that a little bit more, because we did make a change there, but still, at the end of the day, anybody can download Aira for free, use it daily, every day, if you’re a paid user you can use it even more. We have our guests there because we do want to deliver service- that’s one of the plans. But if you need more—if you need more minutes than free offer- than the guest has access to, we have three plans. We have an advanced, standard, and an intro, and while there’s lots of features to Aira- like, the key difference between these different plans—the advanced, standard, and the intro—are the number of minutes. And so the intro plan comes with 30 minutes a month, it’s $29.00, and it has, you know, all the guest features, connect with agents at any time. Another feature of Aira that I’m really proud of is most of our new customers come in through referral. We’ve tried a lot of different ways to get the word out, but one of the strongest and most potent channels we have is literally our customers, who refer Aira to someone they know. And we try to make that a win-win—so if you’re a guest, you can refer someone, and if they sign up you both get a month free, so not just the person who’s joining but also yourself, so we have a lot of people- and that comes in the intro plan with 30 minutes. We have the most popular plan, which is the standard plan, which is the 120 minute plan, and that is $99.00 a month. And in addition to all the features that you find in the intro, which is the referral, all the guest features, we also have what’s called minute sharing, so you can have more than one person on your account. So we have a lot of couples, we have, you know, friends, we have a lot of people who share minutes through the standard plan, and that’s our most popular plan. And then for the users who are just making a lot of use of Aira, they want more, and so we have the advanced plan, and that’s 300 minutes, it’s $199.00, and it’s like the standard plan in terms of features yet it’s got more than double the minutes for just double the cost. So, in summary, you’ve got advanced, 300 minutes, standard 120 with minute sharing, intro with $29.00 for 30 minutes, that includes our referral program, and then there’s the guest signup. Hope I covered all that, Ryan—am I missing anything that I failed to talk about?
Ryan:
No, I think you covered that really excellently.
Serena:
I love, Troy, that you just made Aira a verb- I don’t know if you caught that, you said if they were Aira-ing a lot-
Troy:
Oh, shoot, did I say it out loud?
Serena:
I love that, that’s going to trend.
Troy:
I’ve got to tell you something I heard just the other day—so internally we use a platform to communicate, we happen to use Slack, there’s a lot of good platforms out there, and so we’re always sharing all of these stories, and so one of my agents was sharing a story about how not only has she become so great at googling, right, because that’s what they do a ton, online research, but her son now calls her up, and instead of using Google asks “Mom, could you Aira that for me?” In other words, can you research that for me, so I love that our brains work that way, and I’m really proud that Aira can become a verb.
Serena:
I was, again, talking to Mr. Thompson over there, and I’ve made quite a few calls over the last couple weeks with working remotely and just electronic signatures and all that fun stuff, and I have noticed that just the agents have gotten more efficient, I would say, like they’re so quick with what I’m asking, and they’re so professional that you could tell that they have a smile on their face when you’re talking to them, and it’s just awesome. That’s why I choose to use Aira as well, because it’s trained professionals, they clearly love what they do, and they’re quick.
Ryan:
Absolutely, and you know, a couple of things. One is you had said that you noticed the agents are getting really quick on that—one of the things that we noticed as COVID has set in and all of the things around that sidedly is that we were just not taking as many calls out and about, you know, walking around and navigating, and so what we’ve done is really brought to the agents this renewed training, really focused on what are the tasks that are on hand, and that’s such an Aira thing, which is to move quickly to meet exactly the needs that are coming and that are being asked by our explorers. As to the smile on the face, it amazes me when I go in and talk to the agents, how many different things they do, what places they’re coming from, and just how many agents we have that are doing Aira not because they want a job, but just because they love to do it, you know? We have so many people who moonlight at Aira because it really just meets this place in their hearts that they love to do it and they love to be able to provide that service. We have doctors, we’ve had people who have gone on to top 10 size technology companies, you know, all sorts of things, a lot of people that we have doing lots of stuff internally at Aira started out as agents, so there’s a lot of opportunity there, and it is always done from this place of love of the job.
Troy:
Mm-hm.
Jeff:
So, by getting gift cards, that’s one way to do it. There’s another thing about- Serena uses reasonable accommodations, my wife has reasonable accommodations, she works for the State of Minnesota. If someone is interested in pursuing this with their company, is there any way they could contact Aira to advocate or help them out, or give us some tips and tricks that might help?
Troy:
Absolutely, this is one of my favorite questions, because, you know, Aira’s a small company, we have some really fantastic sales folks, Marty Watts, Kevin Phalen, and others, and their mission, our mission, is to help individuals who want that accommodation succeed in getting it, right? And we’ve been successful with 25, maybe 30 employers at this time provide Aira to their staff, and that’s growing. We have at least one or two companies per week come to us or we come to them through an individual, and that’s always the best way, when someone realizes that Aira could be a solution or an accommodation or a benefit, and they’re the ones advocating for it, we absolutely are successful in working with those individuals, and the way you would do that is simply- you could email access@aira.io, just identify yourself, share a little bit of information, and you will definitely get followed up. And I could walk through what- how that looks like, but we have material, information, that that individual could provide, or we can simply set up a call and describe how it works, what are the benefits, and walk that interested party through. You know, some of the questions that employers ask are those basics of how does it work, we can answer that. They ask about security, because often in a work setting they want to know that the information that’s being provided is secure, and so I can tell you we’ve passed a lot of security audits, and when I was the chief operating officer that was my job, to kind of walk through those questions, right, which are obviously relevant and meaningful, and because of that we’ve gotten really good at answering those questions and frankly we’ve gotten better at security over time, so- but if you remember nothing more, just simply email access@aira.io and we’ll follow up.
Jeff:
You know, that’s a great point you mentioned about individuals advocating for themselves, whether, hey mom, dad, I’m going to college, I need an Aira gift card, or I saw an Aira story about someone who advocated for Aira services that they use on their campus, which led to the college becoming an Aira access point.
Troy:
Yeah, you know, in fact, we talk about employment, but I don’t know which one’s growing faster, our employer network or our campus network. You know, we recently launched Aira service at Ohio State University, which- I went to a smaller college in California, but I knew Ohio State was pretty big, but it’s in like the top 10 in terms of student population, and I think the more campuses that deploy Aira, it just becomes an easier decision, right? Because the circumstances don’t change from college to college, I mean, it’s a learning environment, and Aira provides access to information and is especially now useful even with distance learning, and so I think it becomes easier for administrators and the folks with the budget to make that decision as that campus network grows, and that is actually a push we’re making right now to do outreach to various universities and colleges every day, right now, even if we don’t have an advocate, but I can guarantee you when we have someone who knows Aira, potentially uses Aira, that makes that sale, if you will, that deployment much easier.
Jeff:
With the shared experiences that you talk about, you know, from campus to campus to campus, same thing with Aira access points such as Walmart, Walgreens, Target, those too, those are places where someone who’s an explorer can go into and use that service just for free.
Troy:
Mm-hm. And you know, one of the things I always get asked, it’s the same questions, but, you know, it’s the same answer, which is “Hey, I would love to have Aira at-” and you can name the retailer, the restaurant, the shopping experience, including online, it’s that same advocacy that ultimately really makes the decision a lot easier. Certainly these larger businesses, many of them are big enough that they have someone who’s in charge of accessibility or customer experience, and when they understand that Aira is simple to deploy- as a detail, I’m a technologist, one of the challenges when you deploy new solutions is you often have to, quote, integrate, you have to do some, it’s called API work, you have to kind of connect computers between business and let’s say Aira, or deploy beacons, right, there’s a lot of technologies that depend on beacon. The beauty of Aira access is none of that is needed, which frankly makes it more secure because there’s no information being shared between Aira and the access partner. The access partner simply gives us their list of addresses, and we take on the task- and it’s automated, we’ve got really smart engineers, of creating those geofences, you know, the boundary, the hidden boundary that defines where access is free. And I’m pretty excited about access just because there’s a growing appetite out there to deliver this experience as more and more businesses learn that it’s easy to deploy and it doesn’t cost that much, and at the same time they get this great benefit of knowing that they’re delivering a better customer experience for this population. Again, it’s where advocacy really matters, like when we have users or explorers who tweet or share or however they express their delight, that matters to those businesses, and businesses that haven’t yet deployed Aira look at that and they go “Huh, this looks like a really great service, I can see there’s a lot of support.” So, I’m being very direct here, the more we can elevate that voice, the faster Aira access will spread.
Serena:
I know when we were talking about the reasonable accommodations piece of things, I know that there were quite a few employers who were a little bit uncomfortable with the sessions being recorded, and I recall, I think it might have been maybe last month or the month before, that you guys made a change to that policy, so I wondered if you could just chat a little bit about that.
Troy:
Yeah, we can talk about that. Just as a quick aside, we never changed the policy, it was always the case that an employer or any access partner can choose to opt into no-record. What we changed is we just got- and it was always true, in our terms of service that you as an individual could opt out of a recording, any recording, what changed is we just kind of made that more clear, it was kind of hidden in the terms of service, and I’m happy to say that, I think people should know.
Serena:
I appreciate that, because I think I maybe read it in one of the monthly updates, or maybe in the Aira explorers groups, something like that, but for me that made a big difference.
Troy:
Yeah, it was us being really clear that you can choose to opt out of recording your session on any call by asking the agent.
Jeff:
Wow, that’s great. When we were talking about access points we briefly touched on airports, but even- I believe it’s Miami Beach, cities, the list just keeps expanding.
Troy:
Yeah, it’s interesting, lots of municipalities have different ideas about how to deploy Aira, like we have- Ryan, what is it, the city of Milwaukee has all their public spaces as access including their transit? You mentioned the city of Miami Beach, I’m not going to say who else we’re in talks with, but some of them are even bigger than cities, so we’ll see where some of these go, we’ve got the airports were kind of where we started because that was kind of a showcase experience, but Houston Metro is in a pilot, so transportation and cities I think everyone recognizes again it’s an easy solution to deploy and it has benefits. And then recently we announced that we’re down in Australia, the Sydney- I’m going to get this wrong, the Sydney Transportation Authority it might be? But anyway, the transit system in Sydney is going to be through the end of the year an Aira access location, including not just the rail, the buses, but also the ferries, which I understand are, you know, quite popular.
Ryan:
And I think right now, too, an important thing to think about the transit systems is just for health and safety you’re looking at trying to minimize contact, keep distance and all of that, and that’s something that Aira does so well that’s so hard to do otherwise, so it’s been a good thing that we have been able to offer these expanded services here.
Troy:
Mm-hm.
Jeff:
How can explorers- you know, they get it, they wonder how they’re going to use it, they start to use it, but how can they learn more about being an efficient explorer, to get the most out of their minutes?
Ryan:
So, we have an Aira explorers Facebook group. There is an explorers call every month that goes through Facebook and Zoom calls, Jeanine’s on that one, if you ever get the chance, it’s a fantastic time, as well as you can get more information through the Aira app.
Troy:
And Ryan, I know two other places, one kind of maybe hidden feature? I don’t know if it’s hidden, is there’s this super active email group, we happen to use a platform called groups.io, that’s how I think of it, but gosh, if we don’t get 10, 15, 20 emails- some of them are threaded, but they’re often a new user basically asking, you know, the reasonable question, like, you know, well, how would you use it, and then a bunch of responses come in. We’ve had, obviously, conversations around, you know, a chest harness, like, boy, that’s one of the favorite topics, everyone’s sharing their best approach to, you know, how to use Aira hands-free. Or you’ll have some explorer that just gets thrilled because they’ve figured out a new use for Aira, and they share, and I can’t tell you- like, yeah, that’s just a fascinating- whether it’s Facebook, groups.io, there’s even a WhatsApp group, it’s just awesome to hear how collectively this group of people are figuring out uses that of course, we’ve never imagined. Back to something we’ve talked about- I think we may have talked about it earlier, a lot of our best features have come from users showing us the way, not us in an ivory tower thinking about “Here’s what we’re going to do.” For example, we’re always like, to go back to the Aira photos, that was not a feature on the road map, this idea that the agent could cooperate with the explorer, frame and take a picture. That just became a really common request, so we made it easy within the app. There’s some other- I’m not going to talk about it today, but you’re going to see a new feature coming out, let’s say within the month, that is really another kind of user-driven capability. So we see a lot of capabilities that are really coming out of the imaginations of the users, but it all comes back to this community, which does talk quite a bit. The other thing Ryan and I don’t know if you mentioned, isn’t Jeanine also doing this expedition series? There’s a, I think a weekly podcast and call where it really is more than just an explorer call, it’s focusing on what you can do with Aira. And all of that information that I talked about is on our website, or you can always call into customer care and ask, you know, we have some awesome customer care agents, you know, many of them, by the way, I’m proud to say are Aira users, right? So therefore they can relate to the individuals, and you know, they have a lot of great information as well. So there’s just so many different ways to learn, and by the way, we’re always listening and if there’s a better way to kind of share and grow the understanding of Aira, you know, we’re always open to that as well.
Ryan:
And if I can add one more plug on that, you know, ask the agents. Like if you’re on a call with an agent and you want to know how you might be able to do something, even if it’s not the task at hand, the agents have so much experience with so many different uses, and you know, not everyone’s in these groups, not everyone’s coming onto the calls and sharing their experience, but the agents, you know, definitely get this breadth of everything that can be done on Aira. One of the things that we always find is sometimes difficult when someone asks us, you know “What can you do on Aira?” Everything, right, like what can’t you do? And so sometimes coming into the agents with a very specific question, and they’ll be able to really help point in directions to how they’ve done it before and really build on the breadth of their experience to help kind of find different ways you can address Aira.
Jeff:
You know, one of the experiences that I keep resorting back to is going into the picture that was labelled, you know, with commas from left to right, the back of my roll-in keyboard, every once in a while I move things around, I want to hook it all back up, and I just come to a dead standstill because there’s a lot of stuff, so I took a picture on the right and the left, the Aira agent took a picture on the left and the right, and then labelled it, so I got them in my folder, and the back of my mixer board, I got my dishwasher, I got these photographs of these mostly electronic type of devices that when I need to reference it, I have that, and so I don’t need to use the Aira agent every time for it because I’ve already successfully created a database of these pictures that I have that I use, but there’s always something new, always something never thought of, so it’s great to get ideas from other experienced users.
Ryan:
Absolutely.
Serena:
I’ve even used Aira for graphic design. I’ll use canva.com, and I’ll be like “Hey, can you help me do this?” and they’re like “Oh, I’ve never done this before!” and they start doing it and they’re like “Hey, this is really cool!” I love how perfectionistic they are, when it comes to the graphic designing, because they’ll make sure it looks really good before they say it’s done.
Ryan:
Perfectionism is definitely a trait we look for when hiring agents, we want to make sure you get exactly what you want out of them.
Troy:
I just wanted to add, because I know I talk to a lot of explorers who use it for just one dimension of their life, which is totally normal, you know, it’s very common. And so I just wanted to stress, I do talk to a lot of folks, I’m very curious how people use Aira, what they think, I’m always asking, and there are a lot of folks who just say “Well, I just use it for navigation” or “I just use it for inside the house and cooking,” so that is- if you’re one of those users who just use it for one thing, that is common, because I’ve heard others say “Well, I think I should use it for more, I feel bad that I haven’t used it for other things, and I mention that because I think there’s phases that a lot of explorers go through, they go through this, like “I want to get really comfortable and confident around a specific need I have,” or use case, and sometimes, you know, whether it’s a month, three months, six months in, they start to broaden and try things, try new things, and I think that comes back to that community. I’ve asked them “Well, why did you try something?” Well, because I’m on this email group or I heard on Facebook or I talked to my friend, so I would just say to anyone who’s using Aira, you know, it’s okay if you’re just using it for one or two things, but you know, keep your ears open, and like Ryan said, even ask the agent, like the agents tend to know explorers over time, and they might be able to suggest “Well, have you ever thought of this, or that,” so it’s okay to start small and then broaden from there.
Serena:
Yeah, my favorite offer that you have is, I believe it’s Intuit that’s sponsoring it, is the small business offer, because I have- Jeff knows this, I have multiple side jobs that are run through a separate business of mine, and that has come in handy quite a bit, like I said earlier, with designing graphics and making sure things look professional.
Troy:
Well, I talk to Intuit quite a bit, and the gentleman there that really spearheads this offer, and I’ve got to give a shout out to Ted Drake, if you’ve ever met Ted Drake, and I can tell you at Intuit, everyone asks me “Why are they doing that?” Well, their whole mission is to, quote, “Power Prosperity,” and what they see as this, you know, broad use of Aira that enables small business owners to achieve more, and they’re always looking for stories, and feedback, and they would love for- it’s that same plug I give, the more you share publicly about those successes, you know, they listen, and that’s meaningful to them, and I know if Ted were listening to this he’d be quite exciting that you mentioned that offer because they’re quite proud of what it’s enabled, whether it’s, you know, he’s done the research to find out because some folks have reached out to Intuit to either thank or comment, and whether it’s helping them hire new employees, get tasks done like you mentioned, you know, graphic design, building websites, reconciling receipts, as a small business owner, and I guess in some ways I’m a small business owner, there’s always more to do than meets the eye, and we’re always looking for ways to be more efficient, and Aira really helps, I know, because it’s one of our most popular offers that we have.
Serena:
And you can get a lot done, like every time I call in I think I’m going to use a ton of minutes and then I’m done and I’m like “Oh, that was it?” I think people forget how quickly and efficiently you can get things done in a very small amount of time.
Jeff:
Well, I think when you really think about it, you know, the agent’s sitting there with a dashboard that can connect up to GPS and has the whole internet at their fingertips. You can call up a friend and try and ask them about ’em, but when you have someone that’s trained in this and has the resources on their dashboard to assist you, the efficiency is just boom-boom, you know? I like that.
Troy:
If an agent kind of runs out of an idea, like gets stuck, let’s say, like they’re trying to do something, they don’t- maybe they’ve never done it before, how do they reach out? Like, don’t they have support from others, other agents, and someone who’s maybe lead for that day, what happens when an agent kind of runs out of an idea or gets stuck?
Ryan:
So, a couple of things, and really, I want to emphasize in doing this that when reaching out to the community of other agents to find ways to do this, our primary concern here is the privacy of the user, and we always want to make sure that the call is always between the user and the agent, and that there’s no sort of information getting out and leaking around, right? Because people use Aira for all sorts of things, and we want to- you know, part of the brand value of Aira is really based in that trust that our users have, but yeah, if you were, say, an agent who got a call for something that you didn’t quite know how to do, the first thing we train them to do is how to look things up, and I mean, like, we teach them how to google, and you think “Oh, Google’s simple, right? Like, you just type it in,” but there are so many different ways that you can pull the information out past just typing and hitting enter. And so the agent will go ahead and first try to assist you directly, you know, looking up as they need. One of the things we do is make sure our agents are always doing as they’re on a call is preemptively having that information at their fingertips. Our agents are excellent multitaskers, and any time that you ask them a question there’s a good chance they already have that answer because they already knew you were going to ask that question. But if, for example, they couldn’t- maybe gardening is a pretty good example, right? There’s a certain aspect where you can describe the visuals of a plant if someone’s asking you, you know, or describe the difference between a sprout and a weed, but if you don’t know that, and you can’t find that easily, you might just jump onto our internal communications and say “Hey, I’m on with this explorer who’s looking to pick weeds, and I can’t tell the difference between these two.” And the answer might look like an agent coming in and saying “Oh, here’s an article where you can see the difference between what a tomato sprout and what a weed looks like,” or it might be that an agent will say “Hey, I’m really good at this, I’ve got a garden out back.” Like I said earlier, our agents have such a broad, just vast set of experiences, that they might say “Hey, ask the explorer if they want to just trade out,” and the explorer will call back, they’ll pick up the call, and you know, you get a certified expert, right on the line, of almost anything you could possibly want to do. Serena, I was laughing as you were talking about graphic design because we have a number of agents who do graphic design professionally as kind of their side thing, so it’s definitely a thing where if you can think of it, there’s probably an agent who is an expert in it.
Jeff:
Yeah, I think you mentioned that earlier, but I think it bears repeating, how easy is it for a potential Aira explorer to sign up?
Ryan:
It’s really easy. All it takes is downloading the app and putting in a phone number.
Serena:
I like that, because I hate it when I download a new app and it’s like all these fields you have to fill out on your phone, which I’m not sure for the sighted community if they hate keyboards as much as we do, but I hate filling out forms on my phone, so I love that it’s that easy, and I believe when I signed up I think you guys sent me a code via text and I just typed in that code and was done.
Troy:
By the way, that’s another case where the community talked and we listened. We used to ask for quite a bit of information before you got started, and what we learned is exactly what all of us learned, like I don’t like filling out a ton of information, especially before I know even if this app is going to be useful for me, right? So why do that? So we literally just require a phone number, and the reason we need the phone number is we need to text you a code, and that’s it. So download the app, iOS, Android, put in your phone number, you get the code from the text message, you put it in, and boom, you can make a call.
Ryan:
That’s the initial experience. Agents will over the next couple of calls ask you some more things, and really that’s about providing as best of a service to you as possible, we really want to make it so that every call you have is individually tailored for you and not just a product that goes out to all of the explorers or all of the guests, right? Like, this is a call that you’re on and we want that agent to be able to serve exactly what you need.
Jeff:
And for using Aira, give us an example of someone joins up, all they have to do is open the app, connect to an agent, point the phone at what information they want to gather, and that’s basically it.
Ryan:
That is literally everything you need to do.
Jeff:
And some people use lanyards to hold it down, like if they’re navigating, and they have the choice of doing that, like a clear lanyard that will hang from their neck, and they can point it or whatever they need to do as well.
Serena:
And I know this is such a small thing, but they always, always, always, always- I say that like four times, greet you by name. And that- I know that’s little, and I’m sure it’s something that you guys did a lot of research about, but it means a lot that they know who I am, and that they’ve taken the time to greet me by my name. I know that sounds odd, but it’s a psychological thing too. If somebody knows my name, I feel that connection, and feel like they want to help me.
Jeff:
That is a big point. It’s better than having someone pick up the phone and go “Yeah?”
Serena:
“What do you want?”
Jeff:
“Again?” You know, it is great. You know, you can go to aira.io on the website, you can go into the app stores, Google Play, and just type in Aira, that’s A-I-R-A, and download it, that’s all there is to it, and it’s free, just give it a shot, give it a whirl, and choose your plans, all the information- there’s a lot of information there on the app itself, so you can snoop around on the app, and kick it around a little bit and give it a try. I’m sure you’re going to be- first of all, that wow factor when it first happens, it’s like “Wow,” you know? I was just talking to a friend of mine, she was in Las Vegas and walked out on the strip, and just turned it on and just got an earful, an earful of information that she had no idea that was available to her, and so that was great. Now, this is a question for Troy—Troy, six months of CEO at Aira, what has been the biggest challenge in navigating Aira into the future?
Troy:
First of all, I’ve got to say, this- I’ve had a great career, and worked at many fascinating companies, and I know Aira before I became CEO was the best company, and the most exciting. Since becoming CEO, like that was obviously a big change, big transition, and a lot of responsibility, right? Like, I know that a lot of people use, love Aira, they depend on Aira, at some level they want it to be there. We have hundreds of agents who, you know, love this job, and I think many of us see a future that’s even bigger and brighter, right? I think there’s a lot more Aira can and will do, and taking over and kind of leading this company, we had to look at, you know, sustainability, and how do we operate for the long haul, right? And the biggest challenge has been kind of charting that course, which has required some changes, right, we had to let go of Horizon, that didn’t- ultimately did not meet our standard, had a lot of challenges, drove a lot of costs, right, for the benefit it delivered, it wasn’t there, it didn’t meet that goal of sustainability. And then COVID hit, right? I’m not complaining, I’m relishing any challenge like anyone, but as a new CEO, I thought a lot of things could go wrong, a lot of things could happen, but that certainly wasn’t in the book, right? And I’m sure there’s a lot of new CEOs and new leaders at any level have stepped in to this new environment like we all have, right, and so I could easily point to that as the biggest challenge, but I would say the meta-challenge is kind of picking the path that is both sustainable and, at the same time, meets the needs of not just our explorers but our access partners and our employees, and it is a challenging time, right? The economics, the dynamics, you can’t look to history, and you can’t rely on as much of your experience you have to do a lot of thinking, a lot of talking, a lot of planning, and even then the environment is changing. I mean, I talk with a lot of different leaders, and I remember two or three months ago, right or wrong, we’re like “Oh, this’ll probably last three to six months and we’ll come out of it, the summer will kind of reduce the infection-” like, planning against this environment has just been a real challenge, but I can say, you know, on the flip, it’s just such an awesome team. You’re hearing from Ryan, who’s just one of the gems who works at Aira, you know, thoughtful, bright, creative folks. We have so many engaged explorers who give us suggestions every day, either directly or just by the way they use Aira, and then there’s the community, right? So whether it’s the major organizations—AFB, NFB, ACB, RNIB, it’s great to have partnership with them, or even other folks in the industry. We talk a lot with Vispero, they’re one of our customers. So, ultimately, though, that challenge has been just the dynamic nature that comes from taking the company in a slightly different direction against the backdrop of something I don’t think any of us have ever seen or ever hopefully will see again.
Jeff:
I had the privilege of talking to Dr. Penny Rosenblum from AFB, and she’s the director of research there, and the Flatten Inaccessibility survey that went out- actually, she mentioned that that was stemmed off of a question or something you recognized as a change happening with the Aira explorers asking the agents.
Troy:
It started in February, you know, I stepped up to be the new CEO, and that’s right prior to CSUN, you know, I think we all know CSUN is like the biggest accessibility tech show on the planet, and it’s a great place for someone like Aira- like a new CEO to go, of Aira, I’m so looking forward to meeting our explorers, to talking to other partners, and then, that’s when it was really unclear, should people go, and then larger companies started backing out for all the right reasons, you know, Microsoft, Google, totally made sense. A small company, we’re like- I’m like “I have to go, this is really key, I need to talk to explorers, I need to talk to other partners, and it’s just up the road, so I’m going to go.” And what was different about CSUN- if you’ve ever been there, it’s a really busy show, it’s really noisy, it’s hard to talk to folks, anyone who’s a prominent player in AT, they’re not going to have that much time to talk, right, it’s a really active environment. When I got there, yeah, it was about half the folks, and it was a really kind of somber environment, like, you know, you could tell that the world had changed. But we had longer conversations, whether it was with explorers or other industry partners, you know? Whether it was Humanware, or Vispero, or other folks, we had some very long conversations, and we kind of recognized that there was this community. And so Aira had launched a survey on our own, because we wanted to know what COVID meant to our users, right, so we asked them, a very long survey, and so when I came back from CSUN I was like “Gosh, this is a big thing, we should as an industry come together and do something. This community needs our support, what can we do together? Yes, we all have different kind of- some of us compete, some of us don’t, but different products-” I talked to Be My Eyes, I talked to, again, NFB, ACB, AFB, and so my passion was what if we could get everyone together—and I don’t know what the answer is, I don’t know what we can do together, I don’t know where this will lead, but I do know if we get more folks involved, the probability and the likelihood that we can get someplace better is improved, and I think in that first survey that showed up, because as a detail, the Aira survey, called the 1.0 or the impetus, we only had four categories or questions, it was like by adding all these other groups and individuals, we came up with four other sections, and then by combining everyone we had a greater reach. And so all that information is on flatteninaccessibility.com, I know each participant is using that information to help inform what they do differently. For us it was about distance learning, and for example training our agents on social distancing and some other actions, but I think as a group it was great to partner, and we’re going to continue to work together to figure out how we can as a community meet the needs together.
Jeff:
I think that’s great, community, you know, you guys drive some of your changes, your- the experiences that you have, are all coming from explorers, grassroots type of listening. The ears are open, agents are listening, that’s part of the deal there.
Serena:
So, Troy, earlier Jeff asked you, kind of the challenging times that you’re navigating in these first six months of being a CEO, and I noticed one of the things that you had mentioned was making sure that the company could be sustainable, and a lot of the people listening to our podcast most likely know about the changes to the five minute offer, but I wondered if you could kind of go over those and the reasoning behind that.
Troy:
Yeah, so I covered this in my newsletter and I just put that out there in case someone wants to read it, it in fact covers a lot of what we talked about, so I know some people process offline. What happened was we looked at where this offer had gone, we launched it basically last August, and at that time Aira was sponsoring calls, we were always going to sponsor calls on our own dime, we had programs like Jobseeker, right, so that’s a program, if anyone doesn’t know, if you’re looking for new employment, you can use the Jobseeker offer for free to, for example, help fill out an inaccessible form, have your resume looked at, getting to the job, like there’s a lot of ways you can use Jobseeker and it’s our way of looking to stimulate this community in terms of employment. It’s a whole long topic, right, because there’s different stats you can read, but categorically I believe that the blind and low vision community deserves and can get more jobs. I mean, it’s a lack of- frankly, it’s a lack of awareness on employers, and it’s a long topic, anyway, so we have Jobseeker, and I love Jobseeker, it’s helped quite a number of folks. And at that time last August we had about five percent of our calls were going to Jobseeker and other free offers that we sponsored. Yet we saw a need to introduce Aira to more people, and ultimately our research and our listening suggested that a lot of folks were afraid to try Aira for fear of- and this is some of the quotes, it’s not all of the reasons, but somebody said “I don’t want to try it, I’m afraid I’m going to like it too much and then I’m going to have to pay for it.” I’m like “Oh, wow, okay, that’s just one voice.” Another voice was “I’m not really sure what it does, and I heard it’s expensive. I don’t want to sign up for it.” Like, I get it, especially if you think about unemployment, I get why folks- and we haven’t had this before, right, there hasn’t existed a service like Aira so it’s like why would I pay for it? I was one of those guys, it took me a while to buy a smartphone because I’m like “Well, I don’t need it.” Now you can’t pry it out of my dead, cold hands, right, like I have my phone everywhere, and I pay for it. Ultimately we just had this crazy idea. What if we just provided Aira for short tasks, or, you know, frankly a little easier to schedule, there’s some nice properties to a short call. So what if we just gave away Aira, like five minutes free at a time, let’s see where it leads. Well, where did it lead is every month we got more users—not paid, just more users, right, and every month those users figured out how to use more of the free offer. I’ll give you a little scoop, I didn’t put this in my newsletter—we were looking at this issue in February or March, like, this growing set of minutes which really mean we’ve got to pay agents, that there’s a cost to that. It was growing to the point, like, oh, god, this doesn’t look sustainable, our new mission. Yet, COVID hit, and I just couldn’t bring myself- the team, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to make a change either quickly or in the face of so many people trying to adapt to, you know, the new reality. So we listened longer, we thought about it longer, we did a lot of math, and ultimately we concluded we’ve got to find a way to make this sustainable, and we heard from our users who said “Hey, if you’re going to change it, you know, we kind of think that paid users should have a little more access to free than other users,” right, like the guest users. So we kind of thought about that, right, there’s some implications there, but ultimately what we came out with is something that is sustainable. Starting on August 25th, we’re going to have the ability for you to know when you can make your next call, and it’s going to work like this. As a guest, as a free user, you can make a five minute free call once every 24 hours. So if you make a call right now, and in California right now it’s 2:13, and it lasts five minutes, you can make your next call Saturday at, if I’m doing the math right, 2:18. But there’ll be no mystery, you’ll look in the app, there’s a time that’ll tell you when you can make your next free call. If you’re a paid user, you can make use of that free call every four hours. And again, in the app, it’ll tell you when that occurs. But ultimately- and I know we’ve heard a lot of voices as we listen, and this community is super engaged, there’s a lot of- I’d say the majority of folks understand this is kind of a situation especially made worse by COVID where, you know, Aira’s looking to be sustainable and this is a change we made so that we can continue to be sustainable. And as with any offer, and something that I think Aira is proud of and will continue to, we’re going to move as quickly as we can, we’re going to move, and we’re going to change, right, and so anything that we have out there is subject to change over time, especially as we learn more, but I’m really happy that we’re able to continue offering free calls, and I’m also excited that we’re growing our access network, which is a compliment to this free service that Aira pays for, and I’m hoping that users continue to download the app, make use of free, make use of access, and if they want they can always purchase more minutes, you know, grab a plan, and if they need to back away from a plan for a while, that’s okay too. We’re just here to provide a service as best we can, and make it an excellent service that everyone loves, and I’m glad that we can continue with free.
Jeff:
I’m really glad that you mentioned the word sustainability because it’s something that I want to make sure or I want to see in the future, and, you know, you used the word pragmatic when you were talking about this one time, and it just makes good sense. I’ve heard nothing but good compliments, and the reaction to this has been positive, people are saying “Yeah, that makes sense.”
Troy:
Yeah, and again, to the community, who figured out how to incorporate- Ryan, I think you’d agree, in a funny way, a lot of our users got a lot more efficient with Aira, right, if they could compress their need into five minutes. They figured that out, and you know, kudos to them, and they figured out more ways to do it, and I think it’s a win-win in that way, that we got this large audience who now is super users at a five minute ninja call.
Ryan:
Yeah, absolutely. And if I can just tell a bit of a story here regarding sustainability, you know, I’ve been here not since the very beginning but long enough that I remember back in the day people whispering in hushed voices that if we did really good at this conference or that we might hit the hundredth explorer, which, you know, we blasted past years ago. But, you know, it was one of those things where early on before people really knew what we were, hadn’t really heard of us, I was at a conference and we were doing demos, just putting the phone into people’s hands with Aira running and having them experience it for the first time. And you know, every time that they did you could just see it, they would just light up, but even when they did that, even when they said “This is an amazing product,” there was always this layer of skepticism underneath, and I can’t tell you how many times someone told us that, you know, “I love this, but I don’t think you’re going to be around in six months, I definitely don’t think you’re going to be around in a year,” so much to the point that we had to fight them just to go home with a free demo in their hand, because they didn’t want to spend time with a flash-in-the-pan tech that just wasn’t worth it to try out. We had our fifth birthday a few months back, which I think really helped me to put into perspective that as well as our incredible agents and our technology part of what makes us as a company who we are is this promise of sustainability—that we’re not here for the next six months, or year, or five years, that we are here as long as the community wants and uses us, and that’s really I think what comes at the heart of this change here.
Troy:
Well said, Ryan, that’s- yeah, I agree.
Serena:
I really appreciate that transparency, like, there’s companies that might not admit that, you know? That people were saying I don’t know if you’re going to be here. But I remember the first time I was exposed to Aira, and it was via a couple- a series of YouTube videos, I don’t know, maybe three years ago, ish? I know Emily was on one of them, there was a video where it was an individual navigating San Diego, and I remember very vividly that they described the advertisement that was on the bus that crossed their pathway. I was like “Oh, that was interesting,” and then I remembered I was at a conference and it might have been Emily actually that guided an individual to a table at a conference and explained what candy was on the table, and I was like “That is amazing! I never have access to what’s on the table, I just find a seat and hope that I didn’t take someone’s spot or something,” so I’m so ecstatic that you guys hit your fifth birthday, you guys are like- you’re grade school now, you know? You’re school-aged.
Troy:
We’ve got a lot to do, you know, the future is bright. And I admire companies that evolve and continue to innovate, and as long as I’m at the helm and I plan to be at the helm for a long time, you’re going to see us do more and more, but it’s always going to be with that eye and guidance around pragmatism and sustainability, like, let’s not get out in front of our headlights, let’s not get too big of a head, let’s listen to our customers, and frankly, it’s why I’m on this call right now. We’re having just an open conversation, and I’m hoping that your listeners or whoever listens to this gets a sense of really what it’s like behind the doors of Aira, because- Ryan, I know you’re going to agree, because we’re obviously on a show, but this is how we talk at Aira, this is not some marketing even that, you know, we’re coming out here with prepared answers, this is just who we are.
Ryan:
Oh yeah, I mean, you say sustainability more times in a day than I think probably I have heard, like if I were to walk into a hippie commune.
Serena:
I like that.
Ryan:
That wasn’t even scripted.
Serena:
Not at all, you got jokes over there.
Ryan:
That was not!
Jeff:
Troy Otillio, Ryan Bresnahan, the whole Aira team, thank you for all that you’re doing for the blindness community. We really love it, our listeners love it, and thanks for sharing the information that you shared today, and thanks for coming onto Blind Abilities, it’s been a pleasure.
Serena:
And where can our listeners find you guys, what are all your media outlets?
Troy:
Boy, I’ll give ‘em, and then Ryan can probably find a few more. So, obviously our website, Aira.io. Our YouTube channel is super popular. Our Facebook homepage is very popular, there’s a WhatsApp group, and if you sign up for Aira you get access to the groups.io email list. We have Airacast that you can find on the web, Airacast is just another way to hear more about Aira. What am I missing, I’m missing something.
Ryan:
Twitter. @Airaio.
Serena:
And you have a fancy Facebook group too.
Ryan:
This is what we needed Jeanine on here for, she would definitely be like right here with every single one in a row.
Jeff:
Oh yeah, the Airacast, I hear is Jeanine on there all the time doing a great job. Good stuff. I actually just want to say this, I had someone ask about how they do electronic signatures, and I said, without hesitation, I said “Use Aira.” They came back to me and they said “What’s Aira?” and it just occurred to me that, you know, we’re wrapped up in this technology in the blindness community and all that stuff, but it just brought me back to my roots of remembering there’s people who are new to the experience of blindness, and they just don’t know, so it’s great to have you guys on here to talk about it, and talk about it in entirety to let people know, and Aira’s fifth birthday, but to some people it’s brand new, and it’s there, it’s available to them, so thank you guys for coming on.
Troy:
Well, thanks so much, Jeff, thanks so much for all this airtime, because it means a lot to us, it means a lot to everyone here at Aira to be able to get the word out, and I know you have a great and broad audience, and I’m hoping, you know, we reach a few new people, or people that we’ve already reached learn a little bit more.
Jeff:
Well, thank you.
Ryan:
Yeah, absolutely, and thank you both so much, really appreciate the opportunity to get to talk about Aira.
Serena:
Well, we absolutely love Aira, if you’ve listened to any podcast, I’ve used the word adore and Aira together, and love, yeah, I’m a big fan, so we really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us.
Troy:
Thank you.
Jeff:
Be sure to check out Aira on the web at www.aira.io. Be sure to contact your state services for the blind, your Voc Rehab, and find out what they can do for you. Live, work, read, succeed. And for more podcasts with a blindness perspective check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter @BlindAbilities, and give us a call at 612-367-6093, leave us a message, and let us know if we can put your voice on the next podcast. Drop us an email at info@blindabilities.com, and download the free Blind Abilities app on the app store and Google Play store. That’s two words, Blind Abilities. And from all of us here at Blind Abilities, through these challenging times, to you, your family, and friends, stay well, stay informed, and stay strong. I want to thank you for listening, hope you enjoyed, and until next time, bye-bye.
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…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.
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