An AI wellness check call to your mum, your dad, your client or your neighbour. At a set time, or at a different time every day. It asks how they are, reminds them about their tablets, and texts you the moment nobody picks up. Nothing to wear, nothing to charge, nothing to install: it is a phone call to the phone they already have.
You are at work in Auckland and she is on her own in Levin. You ring when you can, and you feel bad about the days you cannot. Nothing is wrong. That is exactly what makes it hard to keep on top of.
Most of what goes wrong for somebody living alone is not dramatic. It is a fall on the way to the letterbox, a tummy bug, a bad night that turns into a bad week. What matters is not whether there is an alarm on the wall. It is how long it takes for one person to realise nobody has heard from them.
Medical alarms save lives, and this is not an argument against them. But they only work if it is worn, charged and pressed, and they only ever hear from somebody in trouble. A wellness check works the other way round: it makes contact whether or not anything is wrong, which is how you notice the slow things.
It is that a daily phone call, every day, for years, at a time that suits somebody else, is more than most working families can hold. Missing three days running does not mean anything is wrong. It just means nobody would know if it were.
Nearly everybody would rather stay in their own house. A daily call is often what makes that defensible to the rest of the family: somebody does check, every day, and there is a record of it.
Plenty of people go three or four days without speaking to anybody. A two-minute conversation that remembers what you said yesterday is worth more than it sounds, and it is the part people end up looking forward to.
Three things to set up, once. Who is being rung, when the agent may ring, and who hears about it. Everything after that happens on its own.
Their name, their number, what they like to be called, and a few lines about them: the dog, the bowls club, the hip, the tablets, the daughter in Perth. That brief is what turns a check-in into a conversation, and you can change it any time.
One person, or a whole listA fixed time, or a window the agent picks a random time inside. Any days you like, more than once a day if you want, and never outside the hours you set. Nobody gets rung at seven in the morning unless you asked for seven in the morning.
Their timezone, their hoursOne person or five, in the order you want them tried. What gets a text, what gets a phone call, and what can wait for the weekly summary. This is the part most services get wrong, so it is the part you have the most control over.
Text first, then a callBoth are useful, for different reasons, and you can mix them. This is the setting families end up thinking about hardest, so it is worth explaining properly.
Nine o'clock, every morning, after the radio news. A fixed time becomes part of the day, and for a lot of people that is the value: it is a small appointment with somebody, and they are up and dressed for it. Good for company, good for medication reminders, good for anybody who does not like surprises.
Fixed time · every dayBetween 8am and 11am, a different time each day, decided by us. A fixed call can be planned around and only ever tells you about one moment. A time nobody can predict, inside a window you set, is closer to what a neighbour dropping in would actually see. Some families run one scheduled morning call and one random afternoon call.
Random inside your windowRandom means random inside your window, not random at any hour. No call before your earliest time, none after your latest, and none on the days you have marked off.
A morning call to see they are up and a late-afternoon one to see the day went alright. Or a lunchtime nudge about tablets. The frequency is yours, and it costs minutes rather than a bigger subscription.
If they ask not to be rung before nine, that becomes the rule. Somebody who feels checked up on will stop answering, so the schedule is built with them, not around them.
It is a real conversation in a natural New Zealand voice. No recorded message, no menu, and nothing to say to a machine that is not a normal answer to a normal question. It has time, it does not interrupt, and it never sounds like it wants to get off the phone.
"How did the bowls go on Thursday?" "Did the physio help that shoulder?" "Is Marcus back from Aussie yet?" Because every call is written down, the next one can pick up where the last one left off. That is the difference between somebody ringing and a form being read out, and it is why people keep answering.
The same call can carry whatever reminders you load: morning medication, the podiatrist on Thursday at two, the recycling going out tonight, the power bill. It asks rather than nags, records the answer, and can ring back later about the one thing that got left.
A short answer, a cough that was not there last week, being unsure what day it is, three mornings of the same pain. The agent notes these and passes them on. It never diagnoses and never gives medical advice.
You can set a phrase that means "I need somebody", so they never have to explain themselves to a machine. Say it, and the agent finishes the call warmly and escalates straight away.
Older people get hammered by scam calls. Our agent never asks for money, bank details or a password, says who it is every time, and if somebody mentions being pestered for money or a "computer problem", that goes to the family the same day.
Including te reo Māori, Samoan, Tongan, Mandarin and Hindi, and it will switch if they answer in a different one. It can be set to speak slowly and clearly, which matters more than the language count.
The number works both ways. If they want a chat, or want the family told something, they can ring in and the agent picks up and passes it on. No app, no code, no waiting on hold.
A call on a birthday. A call on the anniversary of a spouse's death, warmer and slower, with the family told afterwards how it went. Small thing, and the one people mention most.
This is the whole service, really. A ladder you write, that runs itself, and that stops the second a person takes over. Nine times in ten the shower was running, so nothing here treats one missed call as an emergency.
Every step above is yours to change: how many attempts, how long between them, who is text-first and who is call-first, and how far down the list it is allowed to go. The same escalation engine already runs our after-hours on-call roster, chasing whoever is rostered until somebody accepts.
The one who picks up, and the one who has been quietly worrying since breakfast. The service is only half finished if the second one is not told.
Enough to know, without turning your mother into a dashboard. You choose how much of this you want and who else gets it.
Answered at 9:04, sounded well, mentioned her hip. Two lines, no login, readable at a set of traffic lights. The first 20 texts a month are included, then 10c each.
Seven days on one page: answered or not, how long each call ran, what came up more than once, and anything that has changed since last week. This is the one people forward to their siblings.
Every call is written up and kept, with the recording. Most days you will read the two-line summary. On the day it matters you can read exactly what was said, or listen to it.
Add as many people as you like, each with their own rules. The daughter who lives nearby can be call-first while the son in London gets the weekly summary only. It stops all of this landing on whoever is closest.
A fall mentioned, pain three days running, a phrase you asked us to watch for, or nobody answering. Those do not wait for the weekly summary, they go out the moment the call ends.
Nobody is rung without being asked first and told what happens to what they say. Only the contacts you name can see any of it, calls and transcripts are stored in New Zealand and encrypted, and it all stops the day you say stop.
The most useful thing we can do on this page is be blunt about the edges of it. If you are choosing between this and a monitored alarm, read this bit twice.
Families are the obvious case, but the organisations that already carry this job are the ones it changes most, because they are doing it by hand on a Monday morning with a list and a landline.
Two tiers, split by how many people are being rung rather than by features. Both get every part of the service: the random windows, the reminders, the escalation ladder and the reporting. No setup fee, no per-contact charge, no lock-in, and no cut of anything.
~$79.00 a month A two-minute call every day is about 60 minutes, so 40 minutes past the allowance. Shorter calls, or every second day, and you stay inside it.
~$1,369.00 a month 40 clients rung daily is around 2,400 minutes, which is about $34.23 a person. The more people on the list, the less each one costs.
Prices in NZD and exclude GST. Escalation texts to family or staff come out of your account's included texts (the first 20 a month), then 10c each. Ring 0800 437 688 and we will work out your actual monthly number on the call, out loud, before you commit to anything.
Nine of the questions we hear most. If yours isn't here, ring our live demo agent on 03 242 1183, it'll either answer or queue a callback from a human.
The Talkify mobile app puts the dashboard, transcripts and live coaching in your hand. Listen back to any call, edit your agent's prompt mid-shift, get push-notified the moment a hot lead lands.