Accessibility drives customer acquisition - Interview with Joel Kellhofer of SignWow

0:00So welcome to the next edition of the PunkCX podcast. Now, today's episode is a little different as I am joined by Joel Kelhoffer, a deaf entrepreneur based in Edinburgh. He's a neighbor of mine. Hello. And who is passionate about transforming accessibility in a way that is both seamless and cost effective for organizations. Now, Joel founded and runs SignWOW, which focuses on making organizations truly accessible to the deaf community through video relay services and remote BSL. BSL is British Sign Language Interpreting. He's also joined by Emma, who's the Chief Interpreter Officer at SignWOW.

0:43So, hello, Joel. Hello, Emma. Welcome to the podcast. Hello. I should say, before we can proceed, for those that are watching the video version of this podcast or listening to the audio version, you'll experience some pauses after I ask my questions as Joel and Emma communicate via sign language before Emma answers the questions on Joel's behalf. Now, I hope that makes sense. Anyway, let's get into it. Joel, Emma, I'm a little bit nervous. This is very new for me, but I just want to say welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

1:24Yeah, I'm very well. Thank you. I'm very well. So I know I did a bit of an intro. I wanted to ask, is there anything that I've missed that you'd like to add that gives us a bit of context before we kind of get into some questions about Joel's journey, what SignWive does, and how it kind of helps organizations?

1:49I don't think that you did, but I would just like to say a huge thank you for asking us to be part of this podcast today. Awesome.

2:00Now, before we get into the work that SignWow does, I mean, Joel, I wonder if you can tell me a little bit more about your background and experiences as a deaf founder. It almost like sets the scene, as it were.

2:18yeah of course okay so um going back to well I think I'll start off as me as a person I really have the passion on seeing deaf people's lives change for the better and seeing people happy and that's what gives me the drive so going back to um way back and I attended a deaf school when I was a child and there were over a thousand deaf children who also attended there and within the school it was quite a large school actually with a large premises and it was a residential school as well so people stayed over it had its own gym and various other premises within the school and one section it had a drinks machine so it had a coca-cola vending machine where you would just put your money in and get a drink there so there were various different machines that are within the school and somehow the school decided to then change all of the branding from Coca-Cola and replace it with Pepsi so quite controversial but they brought in Pepsi and lots of the students were not happy about the decision and me as a person as well I was quite dissatisfied by that because I do like Coca-Cola and so what I did was I went to the shop and I bought a 12 pack of Coca-cams.

3:41I took them into school and I started to sell them. And actually it was a real success. Right. So there was, I think I made like, I think I decreased the price by five pence and I made, it was a massive difference. And then I onboarded some people to come and work with me and the school principal spoke with me and said, look, you can't be doing that. But then they realised that they couldn't actually stop me doing it because I'd been doing it for so long anyway. and basically the sales of Pepsi decreased because I was selling this on the side and that has led to my entrepreneurship to this day.

4:15Nice. So, yeah, so here we are. Go ahead. Okay, yeah, just to add to that as well, so how that links to where I am today is moving on from there. I've always had a passion for media and film production and it was very difficult as a deaf person to get a job as it is today. So the way to get a job was to establish my own service. So I did that by providing media services which looked at accessible media for deaf people and by way of providing access on people's websites. So I had a contract with BT actually many, many years ago and they wanted to provide access for deaf people because they'd seen the work that I'd done.

5:05So they wanted to provide access on their website. So I then founded a company for training to teach people how to sign. And, you know, that kind of went on for about over 10 years. and I think the journey really has become, that influenced how I then established the interpreting services and it's just there's so many gaps in the market there and there are so many barriers where there's not a lot of option there for live communication for deaf people. So that then led me to found the video relay service which I've been doing for such a long time now and hence my establishment of SignWell. Nice.

5:46And I wonder, just to give people a sense of the sort of everyday communication barriers that deaf people face, particularly in public services, healthcare, hospitality, and retail, because I know that I've spoken to other people in the past around access and inclusivity and how that impacts design or it doesn't impact design and things. And I wanted to ask you to help me understand what are the barriers that deaf people face and what does it stop them sort of doing, as it were? How does it limit them, if anyway, at all? Just because we get an understanding of the nature of the problem. Yeah, of course.

6:36Okay, so, I mean, it's such a broad answer, I think. but I'll try and link it to a personal experience. So for example, I've wanted to buy a new car. I wanted to have a more upgraded car. I went to the car sales room and I wanted to have a little look around to see something that would suit me. But the difficulty is that I would go to a shop and you would get a car and what you see is what you get. But now the advanced technology is amazing. You get the self-drives, you get the adaptive cruise control there's so much more complexities to buying a car as opposed to what they used to be and you know I've spoken to friends about this about when they've got cars and it turns out that they've bought cars and not understood that there were all these added these added things such as maps or the adaptive cruise control and that was actually an added cost that's not included in the car so for me one of my barriers is that when I go to a car sales room um it's it's not possible to communicate with somebody to the depth that i would like to and you know imagine being um a non-native english speaker imagine you're a french person you're going to a sales room here and everybody's speaking english but you're a customer just like everybody else and you want that quick communication so it would be great to have an interpreter on the spot to have that and that's what i experienced as a deaf person so i think you know to solve the issue there it's just providing access through interpreters so a simple thing of accessibility makes a huge difference and that's where sometimes the barriers lie that there's just not that access and you know taking that into a public services example for example and I've had a lot of deaf people tell me their stories that occur regularly where they go to the GP, the hospital and they've had um you know some serious health concerns or some serious health issues they've expected to have an interpreter there and the interpreter hasn't arrived it's not being booked for various reasons and then on the spot they're left with no communication or having to write down some information between themselves and the doctor and that is just astounding that that still happens if you imagine um a person has um you know they've got a family and they it can massively impact their lives because it doesn't just impact their own um health life it doesn't just impact their work it can affect have a knock-on effect with like their mortgage their um their family caring duties so it's not just the impact it has on the deaf person it's that knock-on effect so But yeah, the impact of not having access can be quite severe sometimes.

9:26And I know that you, Joel, you said that you went to a residential school that had a thousand different students, which, and it was a, it sounds an amazing kind of place. And the work that you did selling Coca-Cola in opposition to kind of Pepsi, I was like, Coca-Cola's it, obviously. That's kind of great. But I wanted to, I mean, it's a really big school, but I wanted to understand like how big is the the the the deaf community say in the UK and and and and kind of beyond like there's almost a percentage of the population

10:05yeah um okay so to just before I explain and elaborate on that so the school that I went to um just to backpedal a little bit I was actually I was I was born in London and then I moved to America um so I actually went to a school in Florida um and that's where the school was I see and that was a residential school I stayed there for three years and so I had like a green visa that I was there for a few years before I then came back to London but going back to your question about deaf people in Britain, in the UK, the population of deaf people with sign language is around 150 ,000 people reported.

10:50Okay. But for example, I am one deaf person. I have three children. They are not deaf, so they're hearing. I am responsible. I'm a responsible adult for three children so although 150 ,000 people doesn't sound that much I'm responsible then for three people so that's three plus one so that's actually four lives that are affected by me being a deaf BSL user so that lack of impact on me then has a knock-on effect to the children that rely on me that I have responsibility for so yes it's 150 ,000 that doesn't actually seem that many but if you think of it in real terms about how many people rely on those people it's quite significant oh absolutely i mean i think the multiplier effect in terms of when you actually put people into like almost like a a network you know a human network and how the the the the links and the impact that it has is yeah no it's is is um is is significant and i wanted to then ask about why is it that do you think that brands or businesses don't design experiences that work for everyone i mean because that seems to be the crux of the matter it's not just about the deaf community it's also about accessibility for for everyone and so what do you think kind gets in the way of people not or brands not designing experiences that are accessible for everyone okay i think um well i've worked with many many clients um organizations over the many years airports and utility services public services um and i've seen this quite a lot but i think the issue is that they are trying to think about their primary customer audience but themselves as in that role they have maybe never met a deaf person they've never been in my shoes they've never experienced it like a deaf person does so maybe they don't fully understand the significance of the barriers and I think now accessibility is a huge topic and we think about wheelchair access or does it have like large print or braille but I don't think that deaf people are thought of as much, but we'll start here at Soundwell.

13:23We can be the experts in that department and we can support people with ensuring that that's at the forefront of their mind. And that's what a lot of people have done so far, relying on our expertise. And so that's going to, thank you for that segue, because it leads me straight on to my next question, which is, can you help me understand what you've built and how it works and how it solve some of these problems because I've seen it. I've seen some of the demos and the videos and it just looks brilliant. And I just wanted to ask you to help me understand how it works in practice, both for the users and the brands and kind of how that interface kind of works.

14:14of course yeah so um you and i are speaking now via zoom and if people see this video they can see three people now there are three participants on this zoom call and this is um similar to how sound wow works so it's video interpreting so we are having communication facilitated by an interpreter that i've brought in from sound wow so for the listeners they can hear the interpreter's voice and this is coming from the information that I, Joe Kellhofer, are giving me, giving you, sorry. So that can work via a telephone call or an in-person situation. For example, if a deaf person wants to make a call to a service, they would call through to an interpreter, connect to an interpreter via their phone app.

15:02The interpreter would then dial through to the hearing person. So I, as a deaf person, have my own telephone number. It shows up for the interpreter. I can dial the phone number in there in advance. So once I connect to the interpreter, the interpreter on demand already knows who I want to call. They make the call through to the hearing person and they relay the telephone call quite like how it's working now for this podcast. So that's video relay service. And video relay service is just basically the relaying of information on a telephone call via video. And we also offer VRI, which is video remote interpreting.

15:42right so vri in short just means that i if i'm speaking to somebody out in the community or if i'm a gp situation or in a car sales room for example i can connect to an interpreter on demand via my phone app and they will the interpreter will speak with the customer service representative or the gp and in real time we have that communication there because once that person speaks back, the interpreter signs to me and it goes around like that. And if a deaf person wants to contact maybe their electricity provider, well it would be up to them to then contact us at Soundwell to have a contract. We would put them on our directory.

16:23So in theory it's a little bit like having a phone number in a catalogue. So we can put their number on our directory which shows deaf people that they're accessible. They come through us, they call their service and they've got that clear line of communication if a deaf person went into a shop various different ways we can do this but we can provide a qr code where it says look we provide sign well so the deaf person can connect via the qr code and then they can have that seamless communication like we're doing now but in store so there's various ways of doing it and we can provide that information via accessible videos on their website.

17:03So if somebody wanted to have a contract with a certain service, they could go on their website and we at SoundWow could provide that accessible information to say, look, we're an accessible service. We provide this access via SoundWow. And then we're all working in partnership to show that seamless, collaborative, working together way of communicating so that deaf people are getting the same experience as everybody else. perfect I mean I love that I mean um I also like the idea that it's not just incumbent on the the the individual to push the service to help kind of them but actually that there's a um there's a there's brand partnerships that says hey we're we're aligned we're kind of like we're we you know we understand kind of um we understand the service we're signed up for it's kind of we're you know that we're here to we're here to help and i wanted to understand a bit more about the do you have any examples of sort of brands that you've worked with i know you mentioned retail you mentioned electricity and stuff that you worked with that and how they've applied the the almost like what journey did they go on and how they apply the technology and what sort of benefits have they kind of like seen because then it brings it to life particularly because many of the people that will be listening to this may work for brands and that sort of space and I'm just trying to plant some seeds as it were okay yeah um okay so I think that brands um some examples of those that I've worked with um to be honest I think that Apple is probably a good example of accessibility so if you have a look at any new iphone release or any device release that they have they always provide um they do a live stream and i always watch it because they always have bsl access as well so they have the information interpreted in sign language so it means that deaf people like the human people can learn about their new products immediately and if I go into a shop into an Apple store, they immediately bring out an iPad that's got an interpreter on screen.

19:23So I am able to ask about the products that suit me. So I think that is a real good example of where accessibility is the forefront. Nice. I love that. I love that. I mean, Apple has always been on the front foot when it comes to sort of design of experiences, particularly the interface between human beings and technology. And so I love some of those things. But I also wanted to ask, are there a particular brand, say, that SignWOW has worked with where they've gone, we love your service, we completely want to leverage that to allow to increase accessibility across our business. um how does that kind of like have you got an example that you can share with me that that sort of tells that sort of story

20:22yeah of course and okay so i would love to um certainly pick some um but i feel like i can't single out any particular one um but in terms of public services and our large clients um um it's such a broad range for example we've got um as people we've got services on our community community directory there that are they see a huge benefit so one particular example of a company that i've worked with say and i've always been thinking ahead with accessibility and it's been hugely successful to add to that that if a customer is interested in somebody's product so it might be that they've spoken with somebody for 10 minutes and they've automatically then become a customer because they've had that you know they've then come into a contract and they've become quite a large valuable customer but what they've not realized at the time is they've put this in for accessibility but in turn it's hugely increased their customer base so they've increased the client's health the customer base because they've been able to provide that access so um yeah it turns out to be quite cost effective in the end um another example is um you know a person going into a food shop and quite often you'll see that people will spend it could be up to 45 minutes asking about certain products does they have this does they have that what do you recommend but if they've had um sign wow in place like video remote interpreting they've been able to have a seamless communication back and forth within five minutes in turn the customer's got that customer satisfaction they've consumed what they want to consume and everybody's a winner I mean I love the idea of reframing accessibility as the idea of like removing barriers but by removing barriers you increase engagement and drive connection and drive revenue I love that kind of reframing because accessibility in many parts has always been framed as being oh this is a thing we should do and it's being like a cost or an extra thing that we should do i love that reframing of that it's about removing barriers to improve connection drive engagement and also be a revenue driver as well so i think that's great yeah so i wanted to say that's kind of like hopefully people listening into this and watching the the video is that they've got a much better idea of what sign wow does and also some of the barriers that the deaf community face and how easy it is to address some of those things so that's it from my my um main questions but before we get into some quick fire questions at the end is there anything that that we've missed out that you'd like to highlight?

23:35No, I'm just pleased that people will hopefully have a greater insight and understanding as to what accessibility is on a broader level. Maybe just one thing to add that maybe is beneficial for people is that um you know i have to i'm trying to think of them how to explain it so if if somebody is in a workplace so for example they work in i don't know food department actually this is a real example of somebody that i know um they worked um in a kind of like a canteen place where they would just issue the drinks they worked in the same job for eight years this person wanted to then move to the tills and be more customer facing but they couldn't they were told that they couldn't because it was um health and safety in case somebody came in and stole something or if there was any confrontation so they thought it was best that they just kind of stayed there doing the coffees that person actually then became quite ill that they weren't able to be promoted they weren't able to have any route of progression so what I did was um provided them sign wow because deaf people can access a government grant free of charge at work so it's called access to work where the government support people to getting to work so by providing that with our 24-7 service they were able to actually progress within their line of work and they did move to customer facing work so they moved in their eyes they'd seen a huge progression And that was simply because they had that accessible method of communication there where people were actually able to see their potential.

25:20So this doesn't just work for customers out in the community and public services. This is also beneficial within people's workplaces as well for their colleagues and for recruitment too. I think I love that. It's about empowering people to live their fullest life, whatever that might mean. And I think that's brilliant. So thank you for sharing that story. And also thank you for signposting us and some of the listeners to the idea that there are grants available to help people access services like SignWire and how that can help them. And so anything we can do here on the podcast to kind of try and promote that awareness, we're more than happy to do that.

26:09Yeah, of course. So a few quick fire questions before we finish up. Now, the first question is that I know we talked about a whole bunch of things. And I know that, Joel, you have a huge amount of experience. You're focused on developing your company. but I always like when we talked about various things, but I always like to boil things down and ask for people's kind of drawn the experience of a seasoned entrepreneur and ask you for your best advice. And, but the way I've been doing this recently is to ask my guests to complete this sentence. And the sentence is this, if you want to improve your customer experience, Joel says do this complete that sentence

27:03okay contact sign we are absolutely happy to help we really are I think in simple terms we're here to help awesome I love that fligger a plug

27:19absolutely Absolutely. Now, this is the Punk CX podcast, and so I could not go without asking you a more punk-related kind of question. So my question is this. What company or brand do you think takes a more punk approach to customer experience, and why?

27:45Yeah, I think just going back to my recent example about Apple, I think that they are an excellent role model. because they think about accessibility in the far front. They think about that when they're designing the technology. They think about that when customers come into the shop. And I think they've got a whole all-rounded approach. Perfect. I love that. I mean, I'd echo that. I think that Apple's approach to design and experience is brilliant and one that many people should kind of look into in more detail on what they do. So thank you for sharing that. Yeah. And a final question before we wrap up.

28:23Now, I think we can all admit the world is a bit of a weird place right now. And we wake up every morning and see more disturbing headlines, can we say? So I'd like to kind of like, I've been asking my guests in recent months to help me end on a positive note. So, Jo, can you tell me a good news story? Tell me something about something. What's the most interesting, positive or exciting thing that you've seen in, say, the last week?

29:01Okay. Yeah. I would say, yeah, I've got some, I've just received some really nice feedback over the last week, actually. And it is neat to sign well. But it's a sign while we have sign assist. And within sign assist, we've got a personal assistant service, PA. We've got like translation. So if somebody is unsure about what an English written text is, so maybe they've received that from the council, they don't understand. We can support with that. And we also have like a chat GPT version of that as well, like an AI assist. so there's one person who's been using Thine Assist within a care home so basically somebody's elderly mother was being put into a care home and like many many deaf people who are taken into care homes they experience a whole host of issues which one of them is loneliness so we've provided SignWOW PA which is where now a deaf elderly lady has access to somebody who she can chat to in her own language in bsl every single day via an ipad and if there's any difficulties there where she needs to communicate with the staff she can do that and without that she would have no access within this care home and i'm just trying to think if you were um you know maybe french and you walked and you were cut into a care home where everybody spoke english and you didn't know an ounce of english you would so you would feel so lonely and we've been given this feedback where the team where the family have just said, wow, we feel that she's got a colour back, she's got a little bit of life left in it, giving back to her because of this.

30:43So she's really thanked Sarmour PA for providing that, and that, for me, is really heartwarming. Lovely. That's a very lovely kind of human story, particularly when, I mean, loneliness as people get older is a serious thing. and anything that we can do to try and, if you like, push off the effects of loneliness to improve people's lives in whatever way, I think is, I tip my hat to you. I think that's great. And so thank you for sharing that story. I want to say that's all that I have. but I just wanted to say first of all congratulations on what you do because I think it's important work and thank you for the work that you can do and thank you for sharing your time and your expertise with me today both to you Joel and also to you Emma and I just want to say thank you for joining me on the podcast.

32:05Thank you. No, absolutely. Thank you so much for asking us both to be part of this podcast today. It's been lovely to meet with you. Awesome. Thank you.

32:17Wow. What a great interview. I hope you enjoyed it. I know I did. Find out more about me and the work that I do at adrienswinsco.com. Do leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. And if you have any comments, feedback or questions about the podcast then feel free to send me a message to podcast at adrianswinsco.com and do tune in again thanks very much