“With the face recognition in place, it just gives us a lot more freedom to continue working.”
The importance of customer research during iterative, product development. The customer is (pretty much) always right.
It’s a busy, bustling morning at this particular care home in Cornwall. The weather is dull, grey, overcast. Nothing unusual for Cornwall.
We’re visiting this care home to conduct customer research after an install of Facentry, our contactless access control solution. The product behind the ‘access a space with your face’ line.
It’s important not just to install tech and let customers get on with it. We believe in iterative product development; understanding what is and isn’t useful to our customers before we go away and build it. It’s an ongoing process, and it matters to us.
We’re greeted by warm smiles, blue-grey scrubs, and an evident passion for making residents’ lives better.
The care sector wasn’t an obvious sector for us initially, but extensive market research and customer discovery led us here and unravelled how beneficial our technology could be to this sector.
Care homes were significantly impacted during the pandemic, with existing access control methods, such as keypads and codes becoming hotspots for transmission of harmful microbes.
Our aim is to disrupt the access control market within the care sector, by implementing our contactless solution in existing methods’ place.
“Yeah, it's just it's just not you know, in COVID times, it's just nice not to have to touch anything.”
A big part of this journey was receiving support from EPIC, a programme run by Plymouth University who are experts in conducting market research.
They are a highly collaborative and interdisciplinary project, who seek to grow eHealth businesses and improve health, wellbeing, and enhance care quality by using eHealth technology.
EPIC have dedicated the past couple of months to curating an extensive report on our Facentry technology, helping us to gain a detailed understanding of how our technology is aiding our customers, and equally, what we could be doing to improve their lives further.
We’re delighted to learn that Facentry has been received very positively, allowing care workers to engage with residents without interruptions while the technology grants access to those who are enrolled onto the system.
Care home workers at an assisted living facility in Cornwall said: “It gives people a bit more autonomy, it gives security of a building. So, you know, nobody can just walk in – only people that are allowed can get in.”
“I just think it's nice, it's a nicer experience for them. Our customers, isn't it where, you know, I think sometimes they don't necessarily need to have staff presence to go and open a door. And they can just go straight up to where they need to go. And it gives them more independence.”
We’re keen to work alongside key partner organisations within care, assisted living and retirement villages to implement our technology and learn more. Do you operate within this sector and want to find out more? Let’s start a conversation today: www.touchbyte.co.uk
