Meet the innovator: Antoine Lever
November 7, 2022Post Title
In this edition, we catch up with Antoine Lever, Co-founder and Commercial Director of babblevoice, an affordable, high quality and reliable phone system that is purpose-built for primary care providers.
Tell us about your innovation in a sentence:
Babblevoice is a cloud-hosted telephone system for primary care which supports practices, patients and staff across the UK.
What was the ‘lightbulb’ moment?
When we saw how surgeries were being treated by the telephone industry e.g. expensive equipment, functionality that added no value and especially long onerous contracts.
What three bits of advice would you give budding innovators?
- Don’t do this alone. Build a great team around you.
- Work as closely as possible with your customer and as soon as possible.
- Be relentless on quality. Reputation is everything.
What’s been your toughest obstacle?
Initially our biggest obstacle was persuading surgeries that voice over the Internet was reliable. Skype has done a lot of harm. Now our biggest obstacle is joining the relevant frameworks.
What’s been your innovator journey highlight?
My highlight was when I watched a surgery transform from a defensive blame culture into a patient centric culture thanks to babblevoice reporting and remote monitoring features.
Best part of your job now?
The best part of my job is watching practice managers’ faces as I explain how babblevoice can transform their day whilst supporting their staff.
If you were in charge of the NHS and care system, what’s the one thing you’d do to speed up health innovation?
I believe that if there was greater visibility of the problems faced each day by clinicians and administrators that innovators would step up to the challenge.
A typical day for you would include…
A typical day for me would include a briefing from the sales and marketing teams to see which events and opportunities are coming up. I would then meet with the operations team to let them know which surgeries are most likely to want babblevoice installed next month. I like to speak to at least one prospective surgery and one existing customer each day to learn more about their issues and experiences. The rest of my time is normally spent interviewing job applicants.