Interview Transcription

I’m the full-stack IT manager for Connected Robotics Inc., based out of Tokyo and we’re dealing with restaurant and food services.

I’m originally from England and moved over to Japan 9 years ago.

How was the communication within your company before using Kiara?

When I first joined the company, everyone was basically speaking their native language.

Though the company does have a long-term goal to try and move communication to English, it’s not something that we can be able to solve overnight.

We did try other solutions to see if we can help translate the communication first, but they just weren’t as efficient.

Tell us about the communication process and types of people in your company

The company itself is about 40–50 members at the moment, some team members sharing different roles.

A lot of the engineers, where they can, have been trying to use English, all sorts, and in Japanese as well.

If there is anyone that couldn’t understand, they’d have to sort out to reach out to someone else and ask them to explain, obviously, that would cause them to have to take a break in their work while they do translations.

And it wasn’t as an efficient system.

How did Kiara impact your work flow after installing it?

Once I found Kiara and tried installing it, the the accuracy of the translations went up.

We found the communication became a lot more natural between engineers.

Everyone became more involved in talking to each other.

Someone could write in English clearly and then the Japanese member could easily pick up on the translation.

And vice versa, the Japanese member could write their thoughts or their issues and the the English member could then pick up on…the flow was just much improved.

Did you have more opportunities to communicate after using Kiara?

Compared to before, I’d say, there’s a lot more communication going through the messenger system now.

I think people are more open to the communication.

They’re less likely to hold back now because they know there’s a way that they can get their messages across.

Because everyone’s able to now communicate better with each other.

They can understand the direction that everyone’s trying to go.

It’s easier to convey the feelings to everyone as well.

When there are issues that come up, it’s easier to convey which direction we want to go, which steps we need to take, and because of that, it’s just a lot less friction between the teams.

Who do you think should use Kiara?

I think anyone that believes that they may have some kind of a blocker on language to to being able to continue to work smoothly, anyone who wants to improve their efficiency, and they have multilingual staff, I mean, it’s not just limited Japanese.

Any languages where there’s barriers involved in order to break down those walls, something like Kiara is really suitable for that situation.

Pretty much any of the industry should be able to use it… the factory side, direct in restaurants, anywhere where there is a direct need to communicate via a messaging system be it remote workers, on-site workers.

It really is suitable to any kind of purpose.