Many companies consider communication to be one of their greatest values — for Aircall, it’s everything.
Launched in 2014, the startup is literally in the business of conversation. Aircall has taken the standard business phone and transformed it into an elaborate communication system with numerous integrations, including Slack, Salesforce and HubSpot, which can all be tied to the phone system for more efficient, impactful conversations.
Internally, the company’s focus on open dialogue is just as strong. Every year, the company brings its employees to an offsite location to do what they do best: communicate. Content Marketing Specialist Laurah Mwirichia explained how the team’s transparency has helped drive Aircall’s success.
What’s your company’s mission? What problems does it help solve?
Aircall’s mission is to make voice conversations more valuable for businesses and their customers. Because, as much as we love emojis, we know voice will always be a powerful, personal way to solve problems and build relationships.
How does your company culture reflect this mission? What are some specific company-wide activities or traditions that stay in line with the mission?
Aircall has always valued social interaction and open discussion. For instance, this summer we gathered Aircall’s entire global team for a trip in Marrakech and candidly addressed our core principles as a company. We took votes and settled on several key things that we feel really make us who we are. The process itself was a reflection of our answers: transparency, community, teamwork and ambition.
We are always looking for ambitious and innovative spirits — people who see a challenge as an opportunity to grow.”
How does your mission affect the way you hire? What do you look for in employees, and how is that in line with your mission?
Our company is still relatively small, so we take hiring decisions very seriously. Each individual still has a significant impact on team spirit and culture. We want to make sure new employees are not only a great fit for our culture, but have interesting traits to add to it as well. We are always looking for ambitious and innovative spirits — people who see a challenge as an opportunity to grow. And while our team is very open and expressive, positivity is important. We want everyone to work in an environment where they feel respected, included and valued.
What inspired the creation of Aircall? How has it changed over time?
Aircall first launched in early 2014, but the idea for Aircall started long before that. Our vision was simple: reinvent the business phone. We wanted to create a solution that was easy to use, quick to set up and capable of facilitating smarter conversations. Today, our value lies in our flexibility. We want to integrate with whatever business tools your team deems critical, helping them pull useful context into every conversation. And while we’ve moved to larger offices a few times along the way, we still need more great people and ideas to continue our growth.
How is working at Aircall different from any other team you’ve been a part of?
Everybody feels welcomed, included and appreciated from the very first day. We all get to put our best skills, attributes and ideas to work immediately.
What’s one of the bigger projects your team is currently working on?
Right now, Aircall is actually juggling a lot of small but necessary improvements. We spent the last year scaling and adding lots of features and people, and now we are making sure everything we built works as smoothly as we imagined. It’s a natural part of our progression as a company, and we know these unsung efforts are going to produce more consistently excellent experiences for our customers.
Where do you see Aircall in the next year? What about the next five years?
The next year for Aircall is going to be focused on expanding our reach — new integrations, new verticals and new customers. We’re definitely still in that critical high-growth startup phase. Over the next five years, though, we expect to graduate beyond our startup heritage and become a clear international leader. Even as our organization and our product changes, we’ll stay committed to the spirit that’s brought us this far.
What’s something unique about your team that our readers would be surprised to learn about?
Every summer we gather all global employees together in one place. One year we went to Barcelona, another year we were in Marrakech. We use this time to really focus on what our shared goals are and how we can work together to keep creating something special and impactful. Plenty of other companies would find a reason to explain why the logistics wouldn’t make sense, but we find a way because we’re committed to making Aircall feel like a close-knit community.
