Hearing loss is one key reason aging adults face social isolation. Anne Girard, Director of Sales and Marketing at Hamilton CapTel, shares details on the importance of providing outlets for seniors to connect again through closed captioning technology.

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Produced by Solinity Marketing

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Intro

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Welcome to season eight of Bridge the Gap, a podcast dedicated to informing, educating, and influencing the future of housing and services for seniors. The BTG network is powered by sponsors Accushield, Aline, NIC MAP Vision, Procare HR, Sage, Hamilton CapTel, ServiceMaster, The Bridge Group Construction, and Solinty and produced by Solinity Marketing. Bridge the Gap in three, two.

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00:39 - 00:55

Lucas McCurdy

Welcome to Bridge the Gap podcast, the senior living podcast with Josh and Lucas. We're here in Nashville, one of our favorite cities, at the LeadingAge Conference with one of our favorite guests and our wonderful sponsor, Hamilton CapTel. We want to welcome Anne Girard. Welcome to the show.

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00:55 - 00:58

Anne Girard

Thank you so much. It's great to be with you guys.

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00:58 - 02:09

Lucas McCurdy

It's so good to see you. And y'all have been incredibly gracious to Bridge the Gap. We are set up in your awesome booth. I've never been to the National LeadingAge show myself. I mean, I'm just stunned by the amount of people that are here. The engagement. It's been a lot of fun, and it's really cool to see y'all's technology on display and get to see you interact with all of your friends and customers here at the LeadingAge Conference.

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And it's been great to meet your whole team. We've been working together for a couple of years. Y'all have helped support to get the Bridge the Gap message out freely to people. And we couldn't do it without you. So, Hamilton CapTel has been around just a few years. Over a hundred years, I believe. And one of the things that we were talking about yesterday, kind of as a group, is like “Why is this technology still relevant?” And the answers were really stunning to me. And kind of eye opening, when you think about people, older adults in America that have hearing loss, this is a life changing technology. Speak to that.

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02:09 - 02:48

Anne Girard

When you asked me that question, the first thing that comes to mind is some of the seniors that we've placed phones with and just their first call to their daughter, they haven't talked on the phone. They're just overwhelmed with joy and kind of relieved because that's a struggle to not be able to use the phone.

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So yeah, the service, we have phones here. They have a display. So just like captions on a television, there's captions on the display. And so someone can listen to the words that someone's saying the best they can and then supplement that with the captions on the screen, and it just is life changing.

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02:48 - 03:25

Lucas McCurdy

I mean, just communication. It's crucial to thriving, and I can't even imagine an older adult or somebody that's struggling with hearing loss, feeling so isolated because you can't engage, you can't have a conversation – you've tried. Maybe you're embarrassed or something. There's a stigma around it and you just kind of give up after a while, I would imagine. And to be able to have this as kind of almost a lifeline, to be able to talk to your friends and family is just incredible. You've seen. Your whole career has been around older adults. Do you have experiences?

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03:25 - 03:58

Josh Crisp

Well, I mean, anything we can do as providers or family members to make life easier, or to even make communication possible in many cases, we should be interested in. But I want to dive in a little bit because you said 100 years. Well, closed captioning, I don't think was around back then. So you have a rich history. I'm sure a lot of our listeners are not familiar with that story. And also not even really understanding how you do closed captioning through a phone. So take us back a little bit. What's the history of Hamilton?

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03:58 - 06:14

Anne Girard

Yes, captioning didn't exist way back. So, our company was founded as a farmer co-op, for telephone services. So we've been in the telephone service business all that time, and, back with the Americans with Disabilities Act that provided for access to the telephone network for people with disabilities. So, that's our history. And then you guys have talked about the idea of connection, and this past year, the surgeon general put out a report about loneliness and social isolation, and that really speaks to what you guys are talking about, the ability to communicate.

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So many seniors are isolated, maybe at home, maybe in a community. Either way, they have folks outside that they want to communicate with. And this is that effort. So the way this works is that the phone is provided at no cost. Again, Americans with Disabilities Act made that provision. So it's a federally administered fund that pays for the phone and the service. And so, when a person gets the phone, they just order the phone. It's a simple process, whether it's being done from home with family members acquiring the phone for the senior or in a community. We've been doing some community stuff that I'd love to talk about, but the phone is placed, it's connected to either a phone line or internet only.

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Whichever, connection works for the person, and then they connect to the service. And in the background there's advanced voice recognition software that's used and that produces the captions. Now, some people say, well, I've called the airlines and that voice recognition software isn't so great. Well, we have a solution for that as well. It's really up to the user. If you just want voice recognition software, that's all fine. But if you want to be sure, like you're calling the bank or your doctor and you want real precision and real certainty that you're getting everything. We also have captioning assistance that will kind of help the voice recognition software along and make corrections and add quality. Also, it works really well. So just come to the phone and they talk on the phone just like any standard phone.

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06:14 - 07:18

Lucas McCurdy

Okay. So I want to come back to this because I'm sitting here and I'm thinking we're used to kind of in a day and age where it's like, “Oh, I'm going to get a new iPhone.” You're going to chuck out $800, $1,000 for a phone. And I've seen the technology here and it looks expensive. And so you're saying that it is of no charge and the service of getting the captioning, they're not paying for this, that this is covered by a fund.

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Okay. So that was kind of a big eye opener thing for me. I thought, “Oh gosh, this is going to be hard for people.” Seniors, they have limits on how much they can spend. And so that's a huge thing. And then to have that service at no cost, that's big. Yeah. Do people know that?

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06:57 - 08:21

Anne Girard

Well, people are surprised by that. No, they don't anticipate that when we tell them that they're like, “Oh, that's awesome!” And especially in the senior community. So let me talk about that for a minute. We often, and especially here, that's kind of why we're here to talk to providers who are really busy. They've got other things to worry about, but they have residents who have hearing loss.

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So we just make it really easy. We just make a connection. We take care of everything for them. It's just a simple ordering process. We tend to go out to the community in advance to just ensure they're set up.  Like, you say you have fiber, okay, that's great. Do you have drops in people's rooms that we can connect to that kind of thing? Do you have strong Wi-Fi? All of that. So we do that upfront work to make it easier for the provider. And then we gather all the interested parties and get their phones. And then we go out and we do an install. We just did this recently in Colorado at Eaton Senior Communities. I was lucky enough. I don't always go, but I was lucky enough to go this time.

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And I'm telling you what, we had such a good day. We had all these seniors who were so excited about this and anticipating their install. Installed all these phones, went back a couple months later and met with them, had cupcakes, and they were just over the moon. They had been making calls and were so excited. And some of their family members have shared that too.

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08:21 - 08:36

Josh Crisp

What's the learning curve like? Anytime I think of technology and an older person, sometimes you're like, “Oh man, how much time is my team or the family going to have to spend on hooking it all up and training them?” So what's that like for the user?

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08:36 - 09:00

Anne Girard

Well, in a community, we are there. We train them. We set their phone up. It's very easy. That's what's so great about this. People think, “We don't use phones like that anymore.” Not really. This generation, they appreciate that. So we do the training. If somebody is at home we do have a kind of a group of installers across the country who can come and do that same training. It's simple because it's a phone. It rings, they pick it up, they talk, they look at the captions, they hang it up. It's really simple. So it's not a big deal.

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09:11 - 09:33

Lucas McCurdy

And we're old enough. When you say like, “Well, it's just a phone.” And to a younger generation they're thinking “I don't know what you’re talking about.” We were old enough to know and they're here and we can see them and they're beautiful and they look like a phone. They have that tactile experience of picking up the receiver and big buttons and a big screen. I imagine that the user experience is very easy.

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09:33 - 09:51

Anne Girard

Yeah, it really is. They can often program it so that they have a speed dial. Some people might think what’s a speed dial? So that makes it easy too. Now I want to call my daughter. I'm going to call my doctor. It's already programmed into the phone so we can do that for them to make it even easier.

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09:51 - 10:08

Lucas McCurdy

So Josh, one other thing I want to talk about, because I was talking to David about this yesterday.  I was just kind of going and it  had sparked curiosity. I just wanted to know more about it. And I said, “Well, you know what? Why don't we just put this on everybody's iPhone?” And that's kind of a dumb question. Obviously, everybody can’t have an iPhone. But David even had an answer for that. It’s that you can actually do both. Right?

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10:15 - 10:30

Anne Girard

Yeah. We do. We have an app for both Android and iPhone. So those seniors that are using, and more and more are going to be arriving at senior communities with their technology. So it's available on an iPhone, Android, on a tablet, on a computer.

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10:30 - 10:55

Josh Crisp

And so you're already doing installations in senior living communities. So what used to be a product that was primarily in the home that now is in the community. Obviously our listeners may be hearing about this for the first time. So what's the process like for a provider? Is that just connecting the family with them, or is the provider the middleman in this? How does that work best?

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10:55 - 11:32

Anne Girard

I think, best, the providers there with the seniors in the community. So I think that works really well is to contact us and we will do that process. I talk about going out and checking out the setting. And there's a simple order form. So the provider can do all that for the senior and that's the one thing that we have to rely on for the provider. After that they don't have to lift a finger. We'll do everything after that. At home a lot of times it's family members that actually reach out to us because they learned about this somehow. And then they get it for their folks and family members.

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11:33 - 12:09

Josh Crisp

I'm thinking, just in my limited career in our communities, how often our marketing team or administrators, our sales teams, community educators, we get calls all the time from families that they don't even really understand what all senior living does. They've got a preconceived notion, but they're looking for resources to help for whatever reason. Whether it's maybe financially or psychologically, they're not ready to make the transition to a community yet, but yet, they still need things to improve life where they are.

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12:09 - 12:48

Josh Crisp

I could see this is just being a great resource. Even if somebody comes in, you find out, hey, they're having all these challenges at home and that may be one of their only challenges. So maybe they're not really ready to be in the community yet. But what a great resource to build a bridge to those families in the home by partnering with you guys and saying, “Hey, you know what, we may not be the living move-in solution yet, but we actually are a solution provider with our partners like Hamilton.” And we can connect you with someone that can get you connected to where you can communicate with people. So for our listeners, I think this is just a great resource, Lucas, to help people communicate better.

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12:48 - 13:15

Lucas McCurdy

And the stories that y'all must have over the decades and decades and decades of helping people. It was really fun yesterday to interact with the Hamilton team here. And you're one of the leaders at the company. People work at this company for a long time. What's the secret sauce to keeping great talent engaged for not just two, three, four, five years? There's people that have worked here for ten, 15, 20 plus years. Yeah.

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13:15 - 14:41

Anne Girard

I think if you asked any one of them, they would say it's the customer. It's the work that we do, that we are bringing freedom really to folks. But I think it's a culture. We're a midwestern company. And there's just some Midwestern Nice. So I think that we treat each other with respect. We treat our customers with respect. And it's and it's exciting to move with the technology. Clearly, we didn't have apps for iPhones and androids years ago. So just moving with the needs of the customer and the technology that's available. I think that's it. When you are with a senior who hasn't been on the phone for years and they talk to someone that they haven't talked to on the phone for years, it I mean, I have goosebumps and I have a tear in my eye because it is inspirational to be able to bring that to someone.

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14:16 - 14:45

Josh Crisp

Well, good people doing good work. And, you know, it seems very simple. I think sometimes we just overcomplicate a lot of common sense things in the way you treat people. And, a powerful but a simplistic mission, helping people communicate. And you guys have been doing this for so long, literally thousands upon thousands of people out there. And now in senior living communities, they can have this option too. So what a great solution for providers.

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14:45 - 14:52

Lucas McCurdy

Totally. And it's been so fun to interact with you and your team here at the LeadingAge Conference in Nashville. And it's been great to sit in and kind of squat in your booth and a beautiful booth and great conversation. So we're going to connect all of our listeners to Hamilton CaptTel, as we do, in every week's show, they can go down into the show notes and they can click that link right there.

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00:15:10:03 - 00:15:17:10

Lucas McCurdy

They can also go to btgvoice.com and access a link to get to Hamilton CaptTel. Thank you for spending time with us today. Really appreciate it.

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15:17 - 15:19

Anne Girard

We've been glad to have you here. Thanks for coming.

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15:19 - 15:28

Lucas McCurdy

And so all of our listeners, we really appreciate you engaging with us. Connect with us on LinkedIn and btgvoice.com. And thanks for listening to another great episode of Bridge the Gap.

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Outro

Thanks for listening to Bridge the Gap podcast with Josh and Lucas. Connect with the BTG network team and use your voice to influence the industry by connecting with us at  btgvoice.com.

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