Miriam Allred (00:01)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Home Care Strategy Lab. I'm your host, Miriam Allred. I hope everyone's having a great week and a great wrap up to the end of 2025. Today in the lab, I am joined by the founder and CEO of enCappture I've got Denise DiSano with me. Denise, it's a pleasure. How are you doing today?

Denise (00:18)
It's a pleasure to see you and be here. Thank you so much for having me. Do great.

Miriam Allred (00:23)
Awesome. I've been looking forward to our conversation. You've been a busy woman with your business and with your family and with the end of the year. I know how that goes. So I'm glad that I could sneak you in here at the end of 2025. I think a lot of people know you. You've been on the speaker circuit. You're at a lot of conferences, a lot of franchise conferences. You speak often in the industry. And I think more and more people know you and are familiar with enCappture. But let's go ahead and start with your background. Tell us a little bit about what you were doing.

before home care and then what led you to start and capture and what you're up to today.

Denise (00:57)
Sure. So what were we doing before Home Care? Well, we were focused ⁓ with our mobile app platform for any business. So we built customized apps for associations like Harvard Alumni Association, large construction firms in New York City, art organizations, even foundations like Crohn's Colitis Foundation, where we built a really cool, unique app. It was a bathroom locator, and we called it We Can't Wait.

So we really worked with all kinds of companies. And our goal was always to equip any company with its own mobile app that was built to focus on three key areas. And it was always around simplifying communication, boosting engagement, and providing a place to act as their own hub. Because for everything they needed, they want to make sure all their stakeholders had it in their hands.

⁓ So really no matter what type of business we realized is that they were all drowning in the same thing that disjoints a communication and scattered tools and that low engagement. But it wasn't until we were introduced to home care that we really saw the stakes of that kind of chaos because you know in most industries a breakdown of communication is just kind of like a hassle. But in home care it's dangerous right it's

It means poor quality of care, it means families panicking, it means clients losing trust. So that's when we realized that this industry didn't need another tech tool, but it really needed infrastructure that only an agency's ⁓ own mobile app could provide.

Miriam Allred (02:39)
Super interesting,

out of the gate, that the same root causes apply to most industries is what it sounds like when you say you've been building apps for all these different industries. It kind of boils down to communication and infrastructure and technology tools. Did you spend more time in any one industry prior to home care or have you always been across the board in a lot of different industries simultaneously?

Denise (03:04)
We really were across the board. mean, pretty much for the life of enCappture until a few years ago when we decided to really niche down and we wanted to really go deep in an industry because what happens is that you end up wanting to help every industry and specialize features to that industry. And it's really hard to do that when you're talking to everyone. And then in home care, for the past few years,

Miriam Allred (03:29)
Mm-hmm.

Denise (03:34)
Agencies came to us to reduce caregiver turnover because you know, that was a big buzz. what we were realizing is that they were gaining operational clarity and then their staff was more confident and then they were having the capacity to grow. So whether it was like adding new services or deepening their referral relationships or even turning now their loyal caregivers into strategic partners. So this evolution from any business needing mobile app

to the home care industry and then seeing them even evolve working with us has been really exciting.

Miriam Allred (04:10)
Backtrack just a little bit. How did you land on home care? It sounds like you were spread across a lot of different industries. I imagine you had a home care client that kind of led you down this path, but I think you mentioned even before this call personal experiences, looking where the trends are going over the next couple of years. Why home care essentially for enCappture?

Denise (04:34)
So when we decided we were going to niche down, we were actually looking at two industries. One was commercial real estate, because we work with a lot of buildings, especially in New York City, where we're based, and home care. And it actually came down to a personal decision, having a grandmother that was 99 years old, had an in-home caregiver working with her.

And there was always discrepancies on what she told us and the caregiver told us. And living an hour and a half away, we really didn't know or have insight into what was really going on in her home. A funny story, we've been talking to the caregiver and she'd be like, oh, she did great today. She had all her meals because we were worried about her eating. And then I would talk to my grandmother and she's like, I'm hiding my lamb chops in my ice cream container and I'm not going to eat when anyone's here. And we're like, what's really happening?

You know, I really felt that we could go into home care and help the different stakeholders and the different relational pieces within there. And I just felt like we can make a difference as well as then bring a platform that I really feel brings all those people together in one place.

Miriam Allred (05:48)
So talk about the state of technology in home care today. You have been doing this for several years in home care specifically. And so you and I both have seen an evolution of technology over the last couple of years and we're in the hockey stick of AI right now. But what's your take on kind of the good, the bad, the ugly of technology in home care today?

Denise (06:10)
Well, you're absolutely right. Home care has been handed tech that often feels disjointed, right? So the EVV, the payroll, the compliance software, it's been built to manage operations, but in silos. And the most underestimated cost in this industry is the cost of poor tech decisions. And agencies often add new tools to fix issues, which they know actually causes fragmentation.

but they feel like they don't have an alternative. know, when caregivers are expected to juggle multiple logins, apps, and communication channels, the results is confusion, and they feel disconnected and constant handholding from the office, and that basically eats up their team's time, and it leads to burnout on all sides. So I feel like the real cost is lost bandwidth. You the staff gets stuck in the weeds,

they lose the capacity to grow. That's why eliminating that chaos first through consolidation is powerful. And it surprises agencies all the time at how much time they get back and how clarity often gives them that foundation for real growth. I also feel like the good news is the agencies really do want to solve this. The bad news is that most tech stacks just add more systems.

to an already fragmented environment. And what we've seen is that more tech, without essential purpose, and with bolted on features, kind of makes things worse. I don't know if you've seen this, but when an EVV or any other kind of software, they realize they need to add some more features and they start bolted on. I know you use EVV for a visitor.

verification, but now we're going to use it for like a daily survey for caregivers. Now that's like even just like supersizing the confusion on the tools and what they're meant to do, which again then will lead to like poor adoption, right? And that's why when we started working in this industry, we immediately started launching apps as like a caregiver operations hub. And basically it was like a mobile based like command center.

that aggregate all the software together in one place, that allows the caregivers to work with each platform seamlessly. And the funny thing, we were immediately getting questions from the other software companies and they were asking, are we competitors? They quickly realized that we weren't. We're not telling our agents, oh, you have to replace all the software and consolidate everything in one place.

What we do is we're just bringing them together onto one roof because that's what reduces the friction. And then we'll layer everything else a caregiver needs to work with that agency around the software. And then we then anchor it in our framework. And we call our framework the three Cs. And I know we're going to talk a little bit about that communication, connection, and consolidation. Because what we found is if those three things aren't right, no tool will fix.

turnover or help an agency grow their revenue.

Miriam Allred (09:32)
Okay,

okay, okay, this is good. Let's get into some of these things because I want to break down that's gonna be the focus of our conversation actually breaking down that framework because every home care company today needs to take a hard look at their tech stack and through this framework. That's why I wanted to talk to you about this is communication consolidation and engagement or connection like that is what technology boils down to in home care. And so we're gonna break down those three things as a like a filter for home care companies to look at their tech stack through this lens.

But a couple of things, one really interesting thing that you brought up, I like that you're already getting to some of the hot takes because I agree, a lot of these technology companies, not to knock on any one, we're just talking about like the state of technology from where you and I both sit, but it is that these home care technology companies, especially those that have been around the block for five, even 10, 15, going on 15 years, is they're just expanding their footprint. They're trying to solve every single problem. At the same time, there's all of these point solutions coming on the scene.

And that's where it's just a really interesting time in home care from a technology perspective is there's these kind of large incumbents that have been around for a long time in addition to all these point solutions and now all of these AI agents and what does this ecosystem look like? It's a little bit confusing and a little bit challenging for home care companies right now, but I think together we're just gonna flush all of this out and figure out what's here to stay. I wanna ask you two pointed questions. One is,

In your experience, you work with a lot of home care companies of lot of different sizes and dependence to franchises and everything in between. On average, how many technology solutions is a home care company leveraging? I know that number varies, but about how many solutions are our home care companies using?

Denise (11:13)
So, you know, it really varies. ⁓ I would say anywhere between like six and 12. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (11:23)
Okay,

that's great. That's kind of the ballpark I was thinking at like eight to 10, but six to 12. And my next question was gonna be because you work with different sizes, six to 12 is a decent range. But I guess what I'm surprised is a lot of startups and small home care companies, they sign up and jump on board with eight to 10 solutions out of the gate and...

then you also see a $20 million company, a $50 million company, they're also using eight to 10 solutions. So I wanted to kind of ask you, like, is there actually a lot of variance or is there less variance that we may actually think when it comes to the size of a home care company?

Denise (12:04)
There's less variance. They're all using the same types of technology. They're all the basic technology that kind of grounds the management for the staff and for the caregivers in the field. It's the EVVs, it's the EMRs, it's the training, the tools, the communication tools, rewards and recognition. They're all basically using the same tools across the board.

Miriam Allred (12:33)
Yeah, which is part of what I think is interesting because we're going to talk about consolidation in a few minutes. And there's this like challenge as a company scales. They want to solve problems with technology. Like this is 21st century. They want to solve a problem with a software per se. But then your technology stack can go from six tools to 10 tools. And then there's this like breaking point where, we're using too much technology and not enough human.

That's kind of the crux of what I want to talk about today is what should be automated, what should technology do versus what should be manual and in person, et cetera. that's kind of why I want to like lay the groundwork of some of these questions. My other question is, so say a company is using six to 12 tools, how many of those tools is the caregiver interfacing with? Is it most of those tools? Is it all of those tools? Like an average caregiver, how many tools are they using on maybe a weekly basis?

Denise (13:31)
They're probably using more like three to six of the tools, ⁓ you know, because they're really, you know, using the tools that help them to do their job. And when they get confused, sometimes the adoption isn't there. Like we hear so often that...

They're not using their EMR to clock, or their EVV to clock in and clock out, or they'll forget because things get complicated and then they get confused. they're not using as many as they liked them to use, and also because, again, it just causes that confusion.

Miriam Allred (14:08)
But that's part of why I want you to articulate some of these things because three tools versus six tools is a huge difference. Most often these caregivers are not technology savvy. And so one tool can be a very steep learning curve for them. So every net new tool that you introduce introduces a learning curve for them. so that's also why I think this is super important. How many tools are there caregivers?

interfacing with on a daily or weekly basis and you want to reduce that as much as possible, right? What's your take on that?

Denise (14:44)
Typically, when we start working with an agency, we kind of try to think about what is the true price of a tech sprawl?

Is it the low tech adoption and increased caregiver connection? And is that what's leading to the turnover? And we always ask our agencies, and this is a really fun question because this kind of relates to it, ⁓ describe for me your orientation when the caregiver comes in. And I remember talking,

to one of our agencies and she said, you know, we lose a lot of caregivers during onboarding because, and not really to the job itself, because they'll have like, know, they'll ask you like, explain to me what you mean by that. ⁓ They'll have a three hour orientation and then they'll go over everything the caregiver needs to know and that includes all the different software. So if they're using three, six, you know, some agencies demand that they use those 12 software and they'll, but they'll go over.

Give them the links, teach them how to use them, sign them into everything. And then they give them some situational training. And then they send them off at the end of the orientation with a paper packet and a hundred page employee handbook. And I say, then what? And then they'll kind of respond, if they're seasoned caregivers, they manage, but if they're not, they're often in the no-shows.

And I also ask, do they ever come back to the office for additional training or ⁓ more training on especially the different technology? And they say no. And then I was always so shocked by this response about the orientation and that support up front. But.

This is the standard response from almost every agency we work with, with very little variations. And I often wonder why turnover is so shocking. ⁓ So what we built, you know, is like a digital orientation.

That lives inside the app where the caregiver has everything they need from that, you know, before they even start day one. And they use it during the orientations that teach them how to work with all these different software. ⁓ And then, they, have this now handbook in their pocket. So now they know like, you know, here, this is the EMR, but we consolidated with FAQs around the EMR.

You know videos on how to use it so There may be this tech sprawl, but we knew that this is such an issue so now let's bring it under one roof and

let's help them to figure out how to use it. Because at some point you're not just paying for the software, but you're paying in the lost caregivers, the burned out staff, and then client insurance. So, and often they don't even see the cause until it's kind of too late. And if they want high productivity and high satisfaction, they must like make it easier for the caregivers and families to work with them.

Miriam Allred (17:48)
Yes, this workforce wants to spend all of their time caring for people. This technology piece like you bring up, it is a source of turnover because they want to spend their time taking care of people. They don't want this burden of documenting, signing in and out, chasing down their pay stubs. Like there's this whole other layer that discourages them or dissuades them. And so

That's why this is so important is to solve and simplify technology so that it's the last thing that's causing turnover. It should not be causing turnover in this industry, yet it is. Like you said, in orientation, they get hit with eight tools that they have to log in and out of every single week. That's an instant turnoff. And so we have to make it as simple and seamless as possible for them while also getting the work done. You know, there is a nature of this job that is

Denise (18:32)
Yes.

Miriam Allred (18:40)
submitting documentation. Like there's no way around that, but how can we do it in a way that's conducive to them? And then also encourages them to spend the most of their time caring for the people because that's what they want to do. Let's talk about your framework. I love this so much and I want to get into the three C's that you talked about. The first one is communication and that should be obvious to everyone, but I think of it as like the scaffolding of home care. All of this communication that is happening between caregivers, clients,

families, office staff, leadership every single day. And so my question to you is around just like volume of communication. I know this is maybe another hard question to quantify, but just the volume of communication that's happening in an agency every single day. We're talking texts, calls, DMs, documentation. Like, can you kind of just like quantify how much communication is happening in an agency on a single day?

Denise (19:34)
Yeah, so this is a big topic that we do a lot of in-depth work in because we audit communication patterns across dozens and dozens of home care agencies because it's the first thing we look at when we set up their app. And so just take like a basic $5 million agency. We regularly will see about anywhere from like 300 to 500 communication interactions daily.

So if I break it down, it's around 75 to 125 phone calls. And it's always about similar things. It's about shift coverage, caregiver updates, family questions, internal back and forth. And that's about 15 to 25 hours of the staff's time, just answering calls. And...

What's funny is about 30 % of those calls are what we call non-business calls from caregivers particularly. And they're about like asking the same questions over and over again. So that's like a big pain point that we help them to solve. And then if you talk about texts, know, most of those about 150 to 300 texts a day. And a lot of them are going to their personal phones and using insecure texting apps.

I one day got a text from one of the owners that we work with telling me that they need help on a shift. And I was like, hey, this is Denise from enCappture So things like that happen. And then another agency that I work with, they told me that they do about 10,000 messages a week.

I couldn't even believe that stat. And I'm like, how does that staff keep up with, know, because the messages are across the board with all the different stakeholders they deal with. And then I'm seeing like less email, probably more like 40 to like 60 emails a day because they're more focused on like referral partners or internal staff, things like that and less to caregivers. Because what we found is caregivers are not using

email, they sometimes don't even have their own email address, so they'll use like their husband's or their child's. So emails a little bit less. And then like across other platforms, like some DMs, sometimes WhatsApp or Facebook groups and things like that, you know, there'll be like 10 to 30 of those. So again, like on average is like 300 to 500 communication interactions per day.

Miriam Allred (22:09)
I didn't know what number you were just gonna throw out to be totally honest, but I was genuinely curious. Three to 500 a day for a four to $5 million home care company. Three to 500 a day, upwards of 10,000 a week. Like that is insane. And I love that you just broke down by text, email, phone call, DMs. Like it's insane the amount of communication that is happening.

Denise (22:14)
Hey.

Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (22:36)
And that's why this is such a bottleneck for home care companies. But I think what's really interesting, you said is it's a lot of the same calls and questions coming in day after day after day. And so this is where you and I like our technology brains, like, OK, there are ways to solve for these things. So I already want to just like get into that, like what can be automated and what should remain manual, knowing that a lot of the questions that come in via text and phone call are the same, probably like 25 questions.

Denise (22:50)
That's right.

Yeah, so you know it's funny because ⁓ we always start with a communication plan. it was, know, bathroom in the beginning, but now that we know the landscape of all this, ⁓ that there was no communication plan. In most businesses, you build out all your SOPs, but here it was something that was lacking.

So our very first diagnostic we would run is the who, the what, and the where, right? ⁓ We would map out what's coming in, where is the breakdown, and who's responsible.

And then like we would start to like install the SOPs for things like urgent calls, structured requests, forms and things like that. And the funny thing is like every time we do this and we talk to the staff, we start out like, okay, tell us about the college who gets the office and immediately they rolled their eyes. They're like, I would get back half of my day without these interruptions. So that's like kind of where we like start to think about

Miriam Allred (24:04)
Yeah.

Denise (24:15)
installing these SOPs like urgent calls and structured like request forms, like anything that we could structure. I always think about home care offices and like the old fashioned telephone switchboards with the cords everywhere and like one operator trying to connect it all. And eventually, something gets missed. So I always think about it as, it's not only like a volume problem, but it's also visibility. Because the issue is how many of those things fall through the cracks. And then to your

point like what could be automated and what could be you know what's manual and and unfortunately the vast majority like 80 90 percent is like still manual and

It's kind of like more than that, they're like reactive. know, what looks like communication is really like the staff firefighting every day, Like a caregiver can't find the shift of jobs or a family calls twice, like with a concern and a schedule of like 12 texts at once. So they're always like constantly switching gears and like firefighting. And to us, it's like a workflow failure of sorts. we always work.

Miriam Allred (25:23)
and they can't

get out from under it. It's like, I think the issue is it's all reactive all day long. And like you said, our mind is like, create a plan to like get ahead of this. A lot of home care companies just like can't get out from under this load that is just happening day in and day out 24 seven. But I think what it boils down to that you said is like visibility and understanding.

the nature of all these calls so then you can like work backwards. Okay, we're getting these 10 questions every single day. How do we take a step back and come up with SOPs and a plan to address every single one of these to then reduce that call volume by 50 % like almost overnight if you can solve for those specific issues.

Denise (26:08)
That's exactly right, every month we'll say, OK.

What are the next 10 calls? What are the next set of things that we can help you to automate? Help you to get in there where you have that clear path. We start with the urgent help buttons to route calls to the right people. And then we'll do things like family requests and route those to the care coordinator. So let's figure those workflows out and you're right. It really reduces like 40 % of the noise.

immediately and then it also like creates that accountability right like so we know like where they're going to go and who's responsible for them.

Miriam Allred (26:48)
So my question is, I keep using these numbers of like, there's like 10 questions or 25 questions that come in every single day. My question to you is like, which are the questions or the topics or the areas of the operation that are hard to automate and then to scale? I don't know, payroll, for example, like back when we were doing like manual pay stubs, like that was a hard thing to like remove and rewrite in an agency, but.

That's not maybe a big of issue today with like direct deposit and all of that, but what are some of the challenges today that you see agencies really struggle to scale when it comes to communication? Does that make sense?

Denise (27:24)
Really, the communication that holds emotion. So what do I mean by that? So when a caregiver is unsure, or when a family's really worried, or when a referral partner is not hearing back and they have a pager for them, you know?

when they're not getting the reinsurance they need, it's like that panic. So that's the kind of communication agencies kind of miss. And it's the kind that builds or like breaks the trust. And it's also the hardest to scale. So what we try to help them do is like, you know, figure out like, can we give first shift prep so that the caregivers don't feel unsupported or.

visit updates before the family gets anxious. And then like referral intake, you being the first to follow up with their referrals so that they know that they could confidently refer them. So that's why the communication, like it really needs a plan and that automation will follow, you know, again, because otherwise they're firefighting. And I think if they start to think about, categories of the type of communication,

then we can figure out those automations. But definitely when it comes to those emotional communications, it's harder to put your arms around a plan around those things.

Miriam Allred (28:45)
That's a really great point. There is a lot of like fear, anxiety, unknown change. We're dealing with humans. This is home care. There's so many variables, so many things that can change day, hour to hour, minute by minute in this industry. And so just like alleviating a lot of that emotion. think that's really well said. Honestly, I hadn't thought of it from that lens because you're right. My mind goes to all of the things that can be automated. Okay, it's payroll, it's scheduling, it's billing. It's like, there's a lot of these core pillars.

that can be automated because they're like apples to apples, but you bring up this, like, there's this emotional layer of the communication. You know, we talk about like agentic AI and where AI is today. Like these are the things that it can't solve for, which is like taking that phone call from a stressed out, burned out, fearful, anxious caregiver. Like that has to be handled by a human and we can't necessarily automate that today.

Denise (29:38)
Exactly.

Miriam Allred (29:39)
Home care is fragmented. There's caregivers out in the field, there's sales reps out in the field, there's clients all over, there's family members in other states. Home care is so fragmented in nature. And so my mind also goes to what has to happen in real time versus what can be asynchronous? What's your take on...

Are we doing that well? Is there more room for like asynchronous communication or does it all have to be real time because it's home care? Like what's your take on that?

Denise (30:07)
Yeah, no, I completely agree. To me, it's synonymous with efficiency, right? It's really basically the reality of home care with everyone in all different places. But they need the ability to exchange information and updates, but they don't really need without real-time interaction, right? So they should be able to do all those things without having it.

be like exactly the same time. And they should have structural flows for the top reasons families and caregivers reach out, like for shift questions or visit confirmations, supply and eats, client status updates, things like that. Instead of a phone call or a text thread, these should be able to go through like a request form or a message feed that could route it to the right person, put like a timestamp of the issue, and then create that accountability.

We

always kind of like look at this through a few ways. We find like time blocked logic is very effective. Messages can all be delivered asynchronously with the right logic. So for example, a caregiver can get like a pre shift resources right away before they come. Families could get visit summaries at consistent times. And those are kinds of things that could happen but don't have to be exactly,

together at the same time. So it's an expectation kind of like reset and we coach agencies to set norms and expectations like for example like tell families here's how we'll update you and here's how you can reach us. Like that one sentence alone can reduce 50 % of interruptive calls and we think asynchronous works we think of it you know as working well when it's really designed well.

Miriam Allred (31:58)
The other word that comes to mind too is like low yield versus high yield communication. And I think like you just said, it's all expectation setting. If you are requesting information about, these low yield tasks, this is the way you should communicate that. If it's one of these high yield tasks, emergencies, high important things, this is how you communicate. Like there's two different paths. But in an office, like you said earlier, it feels like they're all lumped together. They're all fires. They all need to be solved right now.

but it's all about expectation setting, especially with the clients and the caregivers. Okay, hey, if it's low yield, lower priority things, send us a text and we will respond in 24 hours. If it's a high yield call in and we will answer real time or in the next five minutes. It's all ⁓ expectation setting and there's high yield and low yield. But like you said, it's just like explaining that narrative, setting that expectations and rewriting maybe bad processes and.

putting these things in place.

Denise (32:58)
Absolutely. Yeah, I mean we all know that not all communication is created equal.

You know, some messages will reduce anxiety, some build loyalty, some just cause a lot of noise. So, agencies really need to prioritize the high-yield communication. And we kind of look at it in three different ways. First, triage what their systems can actually handle. So if a message is informational, the communication system can handle it. If it's an emotional origin or complex, a human should

definitely handle it. And then, you know, we use structures like we said earlier, like SOPs, auto responses and app-based updates to remove, any of those low yield volume messages. And then, like, they should design for those emotional yield types, like a caregiver recognition messages is high yields and a clear family update after, like, a difficult visit would be a high yield and, a thoughtful referral follow-up is high yield. So we bake these into the system.

So they happen automatically, right?

And lastly, we kind of think about how do we limit firefighting and maximize the intentional moments, right? The more you react, the less you relate. So we look at communication that it should be structured so that the staff isn't just putting out the fires, but they're starting to build relationships. instead of like high-yield communication builds the trust, and the key is kind of reducing everything else that doesn't.

Miriam Allred (34:34)
love something you just

said, is like intentional moments. Sometimes we think all of the high yield has like a negative connotation. It's urgent, something went wrong, we've got to put that out. I love what you just said, the example of like a client makes a really kind comment or feedback about the caregiver. That is high yield. That is just as important.

as another fire that needs to be put out. Like that's an intentional moment that's equally important and is high yield. And so that's why this is important for the agency to define what those high yield communications are for their agency. What do they value? What do they prioritize, good and bad, and bucket those together so that every time that happens, there's like an action or a next step to leverage like what that moment was.

Denise (35:22)
Correct.

And that kind of leads us into like our second C, which is the connection, because that's the kind of thing that builds those connections. When you have a family calling out a caregiver for doing something amazing and they're so happy, and that's where you can't let that go unspoken and unacknowledged. And in our world,

It's not about just making that acknowledgement one-to-one. It's really about shouting it out to everyone so everyone on the team knows what's going on. We use the analogy of the caregiver of the week, which a lot of agencies do, most agencies do. And what was happening was they would...

you know, say, you hey caregiver, you're the caregiver of the week. And the caregivers were like, that's so great. But when they had a platform that brought everyone together and built a connection, those became one to many. And everyone knew that this caregiver was the caregiver of the week, which created kind of like the aha moment of our, of that connection pillar because

You know, we realize that the caregivers are so isolated and they don't even know the other caregivers in their team. know, that's where we really feel like those types of communications are high-yield for sure.

Miriam Allred (37:04)
Yeah, let's move into connection

more formally in that there's a lot of silos. We talked about this earlier, caregivers out in the field, sales reps out in the field, fragmented families and clients across the state or multiple states. There's just all of these like gaps and communication and technology can help like fill those gaps and create those connections. And I love the example that you just cited, which is bubbling up caregiver recognition, but distributing it.

wider than just the one to one, the office recognizing the caregiver. like the office recognizing the caregiver in front of the rest of the staff. Are there any other examples like that, even with office staff or with clients, that communication and technology can fill some of those gaps to unite this very like fragmented workforce and fragmented operation?

Denise (37:56)
I typically feel that this is where most platforms kind of get it wrong. ⁓ They're giving recognition and points for tasks and success, which is great, but they don't build the community. They don't promote interaction on a deeper level.

And they don't allow the carers to kind of be seen and heard. And this is what I mean. And I think they're great for what they achieve. And it's amazing. But what we have seen is that what they really want is to create real relationship and loyalty to people, not just the work. So.

What we see is like kind of building your own social network within the agency. And we see the connection gap show up in like small daily moments. Like they don't know who to go for help, the caregivers, and they're kind of alone or they feel invisible when something they do is right, like what we were just talking about. So when we first started, we created this caregiver hub.

We really wanted it to act as a social network for the agency. We wanted them to do, so your question is, what are some examples? Our agencies have 150 caregivers. They can't ask 150 caregivers how was their day, right? So.

the caregivers leave their job that day and they go home. And they could leave with problems or issues that happened that could ultimately result in a turnover. But so what we did is we said, what if we had a survey in there that they could say, how was your day? And then promote that to say, some of our agents give them a prize at the end of the week for actually filling it out every day and they got them into the habit. But the importance of it was,

They feel like at the end of their day, they're coming home to their spouse or partner or whoever, and they're asking them, you know, how did your day go? And when it's like five, 10 caregivers are having an issue, now they have that next action step, because now they're gonna call those five to 10 up. They're not gonna call 150 up, but they could call those five and 10 up and have that intentional feedback. So now they feel like, wow.

You know, my agency is there and they support me and they mitigate an issue before it results in that turnover. So that's been a really, I mean, it's so simple, but it's been so powerful.

And then other things like giving them a place to share on a social level. Like we have them sharing images of their pets and sharing recipes and holiday traditions. We do challenges so that they feel like they're all working towards something together and the challenges often have like different sharing moments in them. And then we make sure that...

again, seeing for what we call the invisible work that they do every day, you know, and they can share those things that maybe they did well or they needed help on and having that mentorship built in there. I guess I'd say most importantly, feel is just being able to see each other.

Miriam Allred (41:18)
Mm.

Denise (41:25)
Because that's where I feel this industry lacks. Like the caregivers, may have, you they have a lot of interaction with the office staff, but they don't have interaction with each other. So then there is no like team culture, right? How do you have team culture when you don't see each other?

Miriam Allred (41:44)
Mm.

Denise (41:44)
And

I guess that also goes back, and we all know this stat from the activated insights, ⁓ benchmark report, ⁓ over 80 % of caregivers will leave in the first 90 days, right? And especially if they don't feel

Miriam Allred (41:56)
A benchmarking report.

Denise (42:10)
that stickiness and I think connection is the place where we can build that stickiness, you know.

Miriam Allred (42:17)
So tell us

a little bit more about what this looks like in your app. think, you know, I'm over here like, wow, so what does this look like? I am imagining kind of like a Facebook feed inside the app where they can comment and post and post pictures, basically like a Facebook feed that's a community of the caregivers in the office. Is that basically what it is?

Denise (42:38)
That's exactly what it is. And the beauty is that they can layer these social feeds.

by category or topic. So they can even use that same social feed in ⁓ our new family album, and we'll talk about those later, but ⁓ where they can have a feed on how their loved one is doing and families could look in there and see that feed going on. we can use these social feeds for any purpose. So it's really great, and exactly, it looks like an Instagram feed.

You can like it, you can comment on them. And so it's been really a powerful tool that they're using.

Miriam Allred (43:18)
like you said, it's just building a camaraderie. It's building a community and it is online and is digital. And in my mind, it's online and it's digital, but it will feed in-person interactions. It's like, wow, this group of caregivers is like becoming friends via this online community. Can they be friends in the real world? Can we invite this group to lunch in the office once a year?

how do you use the online community and translate that to in-person human interaction? We see this done across lots of different industries where it's, you you meet all these people online and then it's like, hey, let's go have lunch or let's meet up or let's, you know, then the office can help facilitate that. So it's like, get them started online and it is asynchronous. These caregivers are busy. They're working 40 to 60 to 80 hours a week. And so we can't do something in person every single week, but get them to connect online asynchronously.

And then the office can help facilitate and translate that into meaningful in-person events and interactions.

Denise (44:15)
And you know, it's funny, because that's what they're doing. Like more and more, we have agencies saying, can we put an invite, because we're going to do a barbecue in the summer, and we're going to invite everyone's families. It's things like that.

that actually create that culture, right? It's not just, you know, here's a reward because you clocked in. It's now building a community of loyal caregivers. So then what is that going to result in? It's going to result in less no-call-no shows. It's going to be less turnover because now... ⁓

They have friends, they have the office. And we always tell the office, because it's funny, they're so busy and we so appreciate that. But we always tell them, a relationship takes work. It's not, just put up the technology and put up the social board and let it fly. you have to be part of that relationship.

Because when something comes up in a relationship, a good relationship, you work together and you work things out or you share in the joy of an accomplishment. they have to be part of that relationship, the office staff. And the more they are, the happier, like everyone is across the board.

Miriam Allred (45:34)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, like anything what you put into it you get out of it same with an online community It takes work to mediate and moderate and create that engagement and create those connections But what you put into it you will get out of it and it takes a good amount of work upfront to kind of build that community build that engagement but then it can be kind of like self-serving and evergreen as People start and it start to interact and to connect with one another

Denise (45:57)
And everyone's used to interacting that way, you know? And especially all the caregivers coming up the ranks, they're used to using an app. They're used to being on social and scrolling and that is their means of communication half the time. So it's important that we keep up with that trend.

Miriam Allred (46:16)
Yes. So let's talk about the last C, which is consolidation. And I reference this kind of at the start. An agency can get to the point where they're layering in too much technology. They're trying to solve every single problem with technology. I think that's kind of the stage we're in in home care right now, which is there's all of these really intriguing solutions coming on the scene. But are some of them too good to be true? Can they actually solve for some of these things? In some cases, yes. In some cases, no. But

What are the signals that a company is like bogged down with technology, like where technology is doing a disservice for them and they need to consider consolidation? Like what are some of those indicators or signals to the leadership?

Denise (47:00)
You know, we see it in, you know, kind of like that office chaos again, like they're starting to get more calls to the office because the caregivers can't remember which tools for what, how to log in where, and they also, like owners could be looking even internally at the admin staff. Sometimes they'll start to see like the morale start to go down because they can't get their work done.

because they end up becoming tech support teams. ⁓ And then also then in turn it starts to affect their revenue. The revenue can be going down because the referrals that are coming in are not being followed up quickly enough. Because again, the staff is overworked with just keeping up with helping the caregivers to use that technology.

That's when you know it's time for consolidation. But when we talk about consolidation, we don't tell our clients to get rid of the tech because each platform that they're using is doing a good job of their primary function. And the new things out there are trying to automate those functions and pull the staff out of having to do manual stuff.

The problem really more so is that again, they're siloed.

and it feels very disjointed. So when we talk about consolidation, we're like, let's bring it, you know, all the tools that you need into the one place. you don't have to get rid of them. Let's bring them in and let's really support them to make sure that the caregivers know how to use them. let's put help videos, let's put FAQs. when they go to DMR and they need a website, number, let's make sure it's in the app so that they don't have to come.

and

call over and over again. So, is also more than the tech. It's all about bringing

everything that each of the stakeholders in their life cycle needs to work with the agency and putting that in an easy to use place. And we started with helping agencies with the caregiver crisis. But once we helped to reduce the turnover, they gained this operational clarity and the capacity to grow. So we started helping them focus on adding new services and deepening

referral relationships, then turning these new loyal caregivers through this community that they created into more like strategic partners. And it was about giving caregivers a strategic growth path within the agency. And this shift has been really exciting to watch.

Miriam Allred (49:45)
love this. It's less so I'm almost like eating my words where it's not the technology that's the issue. It's like the integration and the implementation of the technology. It's how do all of these tools work together and then how do we convey that to the office staff, to the caregivers, to the families? How do we create kind of those connections and those integrations and then implement it in a way that they're receptive to? And I think, you know, this is also why enCappture has done so well is there are these six to 12 tools.

Denise (49:53)
Correct.

Miriam Allred (50:15)
How do we get them inside of one app? And then there's all of the integration there together. Okay, here's how the payroll works with the EMR, works with the reward system, et cetera. It's like bundling them all together, but then also connecting the dots of how they work together and where you need to take which task in which platform, which is where it gets hairy for the caregivers. One other question before we talk about this coming year and what it enCappture up to is oftentimes owners become the bottleneck.

of communication and consolidation. And this varies by size, a 1 million, a 5 million, a 10, a 50. But the owners can become a bottleneck where they are still the filter for a lot of communication, oftentimes maybe too much communication. You're nodding your head. You probably see this where the owner becomes the bottleneck. How are you coaching and advising owners to step back so that they're not this bottleneck?

Denise (51:11)
You know what's funny? When we do a demo, we tell them, we tell the owners, because what will happen is like, we'll be at a conference and we meet all these wonderful owners and they're so excited because they see the vision of their own mobile app to put everything in there. it's the, know, everything's consolidated. But what happens is then, you know, they are the bottleneck because the staff doesn't see it or they're so stressed out. So we, when we do our demo, we're like, you have to bring everyone.

your whole staff has to be involved because it involves helping them also to have that clarity and that ease of use and having their each own challenges solved and putting in there. So I know one of the things we like to do is kind of give them kind of questions to ask themselves, right?

is there techs that are creating clarity or friction for every one of their stakeholders, right? So thinking that through, because the number of tools is in the issue all the time, like we just discussed. It's whether they serve the strategy of all their stakeholders. So we want to make sure that the owners are creating that clarity and not the friction, because they like the little shiny new things, but they've got to make sure that everyone's buying into them.

We also want them to think about, can they track everything that's happening? If they have caregiver concerns or family requests or referrals.

You know, how many tools does a new caregiver have to learn before they can confidently take a shift? other things like we want them to kind of focus on is like, where does my team lose the most time every day? And could it be solved, with automation and tools? So we're giving them these like questions.

so that they could kind of evaluate what technologies they needed and if they are the bottleneck with some of these things.

Miriam Allred (53:17)
take

on what you just said is every home care company hits a plateau or several plateaus over their journey. There's this time where there's a lot of growth on this upwards trajectory and then they kind of like hit this wall. In my mind, the questions you just ask will help them get through the plateau, but sometimes owners are afraid to ask those questions, afraid to go to each member of their office team and say, hey, where are you wasting most of your time today?

Denise (53:45)
Or they don't know the questions to ask.

Miriam Allred (53:45)
That's a hard conversation. Say that again.

Exactly. Exactly. So the questions you just asked are the ones that they're not asking. They don't know to ask or they're afraid to ask. But that is how you get through these humps is a team has become complacent or so bogged down with the process. They don't know how to get out from under it, or they're afraid to speak out about some of the processes, the technology, the systems that they have in place. So it's like, this is like a vulnerable conversation for the owner to have with the office staff.

But the questions you just asked are the questions that can pull you out of a plateau and help you hit that next stage of growth. Don't be afraid to ask these hard questions.

Denise (54:29)
And we always start every conversation and support ⁓ call with, where are your biggest challenges this month? And we often like to even be part of a team call, because we like to ask the staff those questions.

And they change by the month as well. They could be really challenged with one thing and then the next. Right now, the agencies are shifting in their discussion points right now from caregiver retention to growth. We're seeing a lot of that right now.

Miriam Allred (55:06)
Yeah, because they're doing a lot of things right. They're doing a lot of things well, but it's just fine tuning some of these things. It's just like these small adjustments that can help them hit this accelerated growth. ⁓ Just one other comment on this. Like I've visited a fair amount of offices at this point in time and I'm always amazed. There are some owners that I meet that are nervous for me to go and talk to the scheduler, the payroll, the biller, because

I won't ask them like the down and dirty questions. I want to ask them the questions you just said, but I've come across owners that hesitate to let me even go speak with these people because the owners in the back of their mind, I think they know the concerns. They know the issues. But again, don't shy away from having these hard conversations. A lot of good will come out of them even though they're uncomfortable and hard to have in the moment.

Denise (55:54)
And you, Miriam, you had a great conversation at HCAOA ⁓ a couple of years ago. and it was to the caregivers, questions that caregivers,

might not tell you to your face, to the agency. So that also reminds me of that. So it's asking the staff, but then it's also asking the caregivers some of those same questions, right? Because they don't want to hear the answers, but they know, they know the answers.

Miriam Allred (56:22)
Exactly,

exactly. And I'm just, I'm an open book. I'm like, come on, like, let's just talk through everything, the good, the bad, the ugly, because in my experience, that's where I see the agencies that are like 10, 20, 30, 50 million, like they are good at this. They are really good at open communication, identifying the root issues.

Denise (56:27)
Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (56:44)
solving the problems, creating the SOPs based off all the feedback that they got. Like the big agencies are really actually good at this at scale and that is how they have scaled. And so that's just my encouragement to the smaller agencies. Like don't shy away from these things. Don't hesitate, ask the hard questions, take that feedback and then create an action plan based off of it.

Denise (56:53)
That's

Exactly, exactly. And it's funny because there's different types of owners too, not only just based on the size. Some people get into it for the altruistic part of home care and wanting to help, but they may not necessarily be full-fledged business people or have business training. So we find like we do the most significant work with them because

they don't realize what SOP they need in place to kind of fill those gaps in communication, connection, and consolidation. So we always like love to work on that strategy piece with them before we even dive into the app, because in the end, the app is a vehicle to implement all these different things. But it's really the strategy that makes the app really work well for all the people in their ecosystem, if you will.

Miriam Allred (57:59)
You mentioned you have really helped agencies solve for some of the root caregiver issues like IE turnover. You have helped like break this down for agencies and seen a lot of success. So this coming year, I think you all are expanding and gonna tackle some other issues. Talk a little bit about the success that you've had and why that's propelling you guys to solve some other issues.

Denise (58:20)
Yeah, so like I said, like we're seeing this major shift on how agencies define like infrastructure. So it's like no longer just about like scheduling software and payrolls. It's now includes like connection systems. And then of course, talking about AI and how to support speed, but you'd still need those good processes before you even involve the AI, right? So in 2026, we really are feeling like...

connection won't be treated as just a feel-good concept. It's gonna be seen as more of a measurable, operational strategy. And that agencies that are gonna win, they're really gonna treat referral partner...

clients and caregiver engagement as they do revenue like with structure and real systems and KPIs and We're really watching closely because how agencies are really turning now these loyal caregivers Into like, helping them build a business. They're leveraging them so So by seeing all of that It's it's been it's like really exciting, so

And I guess what we're most excited about is when we finally hear one of our agencies say something like, we finally have the head space to grow. A gentleman in Michigan just said that to me the other day and I'm like, I love that term. Because

the amazing retention results are now allowing them to look at the app and refocus their attention on the growth initiatives. And this transformation is taking them out of that chaos and clearing their minds. So what we're doing now is...

we're seeing the offices reallocating time to building new referral relationships and spending more time in the community and training like their team on sales conversations and even now launching new service lines. Like I just spoke with an agency last week where she said, can we sit and have a work session with the team to figure out how to put in like even additional services than care services like helping

with parties, like they're really starting to think outside the box. And then they're like, how do we use the app to help support these growth initiatives? and again, it's like, how can our caregivers help us to provide these additional services or other outsourced, resources? So because of this shift, ⁓ now we've created two new hubs to compliment the caregiver hub. And each hub is grounded in our three Cs because they're always going to be

foundation right they're all gonna always need the audience is always gonna need those three C's ⁓ but so the first hub is the growth hub so with that shift to revenue the growth hub is just gonna make it easier for referral partners to send referrals and automate that system and they'll give them immediate and automated responses to the prospect because that's been a pain point you know they send the patient off with like five or six

know, brochures for all different competitors. And they, you know, the patients like, who do I call? And it's very confusing. So, having a hub for that referral partner and then also that prospect, we call it, ⁓ and then automating responses to the process. So here's a referral and there's an immediate response to that prospect. Because what we do know is the first person to, respond to that referral person is

the one that gets the job and gets that person as a client. So that's always like, we're listening now and we're learning what are the pain points around growth that we could help.

with so and then, you know, again, while laying those communication tools. So even like another pain point that came up with like partners really want to understand, now that our our patient became your client, you know, give us updates. They want to follow them. They want to hear what's going on. They want to have some hands in their their extended care plan. So it's been a really nice collaboration there. And then the third hub now is the family hub.

And a lot of our clients have an EMR that has like a family room. And it's not a substitution for that because we'll actually put the link to a family room that they're using already because we don't want to like, you know, take that out of the equation when families are used to that. But what it does is provides new clients, with resources, you know, to use within the agency, like, their handbooks, like urgent care facilities that are close by, like just

different things that they need to know. It gives them better communication in different ways to communicate. Like we were talking about the social boards layered in different places. So now they have that too. And then making requests a little more simple. And then the most exciting piece of it is creating new product and service lines. And then the agency is

making revenue on if the families are utilizing these products and services. Because why not?

You know, in every business you offer your audience to someone, right? And you get, you know, they usually have to pay for that, right? So, so if you have a relationship with a family law firm that will help, and you're offering that service in your app and families are using it, why shouldn't the agency get a little piece, of, commission or revenue for giving that, that service, to, to their

Miriam Allred (1:03:55)
Mm-hmm.

Denise (1:04:13)
know, their users or their families in their hub. So that's the kind of thing where they're realizing that.

till now caregiver hours have been their product, but can we extend, new services to help families? it's all about, in the end helping and providing better care. So can we really offer puzzles for Alzheimer's patients? Can we offer other services for our Parkinson's, clients and, and off them inside? even see some clients saying, could we do a subscription model?

where we could give like more communication and more like it's like so exciting to see this like change in the way they're thinking. So to kind of land the plane on this.

Miriam Allred (1:04:54)
Hmm.

Denise (1:05:02)
We're looking at it as what we call the care cycle method because all of these three hubs work together as kind of like a flywheel for predictable growth for the agencies. it's a system of care that starts with clarity. It strengthens with the connection. And then we see it scaling with the consolidation.

Miriam Allred (1:05:24)
This is so exciting,

Denise. I love the passion and the fire in your voice. And I just have loved following your journey the last couple of years. You you and I connected years ago and I remember where you were at then and what you thought then and you've come so far and you've spent so much time with these home care companies. And I love how like slow and methodical and intentional you've been. I think a lot of companies move quick. Like we talked about at the start, a lot of companies want to own every single piece of the pie. But from my experience with you all, you've been really intentional in how you attack.

each of these solutions and you've been slow in a good way. I mean, that actually has a compliment, really intentional taking it one step at a time and building to the needs that you all are best suited to solve. And I think that's just so exciting. And I love something that you said. I wanted to ask about, you know, 2026 and what's on your radar and what owners should focus on. I love what you actually said kind of towards the start of that comment, which was quantifying connection, which is different than

quantifying engagement. We spent the last couple of years quantifying engagement, and I think we've actually gotten pretty good at that, but quantifying connection is something else. Connection is more ambiguous. It is more qualitative, so it's hard to measure, but how can we in home care quantify the level of connection with our staff, with our caregivers, with our clients, and with their families?

I think that is something that we're going to continue to work on, which will also become increasingly more important as we rely on technology, as we rely on AI, the quality of connection and quantifying connection will be increasingly more important. So I love that you said that. I think, you you heard it here first, like something that Denise said is how to quantify connection and making that a focus of next year.

Denise, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for joining me the lab. What is the best way for people to get in contact with you and with enCappture?

Denise (1:07:17)
Well, directly with me, LinkedIn, I'm always there and following you and so many other great minds in home care. And then info@encappture.com and we spell enCappture with two P's for app. So yeah, that'll be the best places.

Miriam Allred (1:07:34)
Love it. We'll have all of this information in the show notes. Denise, thank you so much. Happy holidays. Thank you for joining me and we'll stay connected.

Denise (1:07:41)
Thank you Miriam for having me. It's always a pleasure to be with you.