The last thing you want when you’re abroad is to get injured, be robbed or
get on the wrong side of the law. However, the situation can be made a lot
worse if you don’t know where to get help, if you don’t know the number
of the emergency services, your bank or the embassy. With our app, you
can combine all the numbers and information you need in one, easy- to
access list, that’s not only on your phone or tablet, but also safely backed
up to your email. And for when you’re phone is out of juice (or stolen), you
can’t beat a small card in your pocket, which you can hand out to your
family. Simply enter your travel destination before your trip, and instantly
be given numbers for banks, embassies, emergency services, stolen
phones, reverse call charges and hotels. If the worst comes to the worst,
then you’ll instantly be able to get connected to someone who speaks
your language and can help – no more flipping through the
Yellow Pages, deciphering difficult languages or miming a police
station to strangers.
Mini Elevator Pitch
The Background
WHO: Businessmen, tourists and families
WHAT: Easy access to emergency numbers
WHEN: Whenever you need assistance abroad
WHERE: Most of the countries in the world
WHY: In case you need help abroad
We decided to create this app because people rarely know
the emergency service numbers for holiday destinations,
especially when they need help fast. It would be useful to
have the vital numbers on hand for over 180 countries in an
easily accessible manner.
The Problem
Our research found that over 70% of people don’t know the
emergency numbers for their travel destinations so if they
need help they don’t know which numbers to call. Half of the
population has needed emergency assistance when abroad,
yet have put themselves at risk by not knowing these
numbers Our research showed that Police, Ambulance and
Fire, as well as bank, stolen phone and mountain rescue
numbers would be useful. We felt that this was a gap in the
market that we could fill with a simple, free app, and our
research backed this up – 75% of people would
download an app that gave them this information
simply and quickly
Our research shows that there is a definite gap in the market for a
simple, customizable app that can provide emergency numbers for
abroad, without the complexity and unreliability of location services, and
with numbers for more than one country or area.
Key Insight
The Competition
P-M-F
Emergency Numbers
Only available on
iOS, not Play Store
Cannot add own
numbers
Limited range of
Numbers
and countries
Emergency Phone
Numbers - World
Only 130 countries
Cannot add own numbers
(just police, medial and
fire)
Some features limited to
iOS 8 (new devices that
do not fit our audience)
Requires location
services
App Mockup – Screen 2
Instantly be given access to
police, fire, medical, mountain
rescue, poison control. You can
add your own numbers as well,
such as hotels and banks.
App Mockup – Screen 3
Share the numbers on your email
or phone, or print them out to
give to family and friends or to
put in your pocket
Feasibility
Because our app is centred around a database, it should be
easy to code, as the app has one key function, which need
only be coded once for all of the 180 countries. Email, text
and printing integration are easy to include. We would also
instigate customer feedback forms, for example to report
bugs and incorrect data. A database with key emergency
numbers is already available online
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_telephone_number),
so it would not be too difficult to collate this data, whilst
bringing it together in a simpler way than is presented by the
website.
Business Case/Customer Pledges
We received 53 customers in the short times that we have
marketed our app, and we hope that with improved publicity we
would be able to improve this, through the use of sites like
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and of course through our own
website.
Although we considered pricing the app highly, we would not
want to price ourselves out of the market, even though our
target audience would be willing to pay, so we have decided on
a price of no more than £0.69, although this could be lowered
depending on demand. The development cost and time of our
app is low, so we do not feel it would need to be too expensive.
Marketing Strategy
We spread the word through our website (reachable here),
and we would also consider adverts on websites that our
target audience would be likely to visit (such as travel
websites and hotel booking sites, for example), and through a
YouTube channel which we would create if there is sufficient
interest
Additional Information
We coded a website ourselves, and also created a survey on
SurveyMonkey. We felt that these wold help us get opinions
and data from a wide variety of people, particularly our target
audience. The website “spreads the word” about our product
and is our key marketing activity, although pages on
Facebook and our video on YouTube will also contribute to
this.