Although they started out in eyecare, the WorkRex team are master listeners.

With their first optometry-focused recruitment offering (Locumly) providing flexible staff at short notice, the team managed to onboard ~20% of the entire Australian optometry market in less than 12 months.

But after discovering that practices weren’t willing to pay a regular subscription fee for the handful of placements it needed per year, they uncovered an even more valuable problem.

Co-founder Lance Qian recounts:

“We interviewed 80 business owners about their most urgent problems. And we found that they were often piecing more than 6 different tools together to communicate with their customers and employees on things like getting reviews, doing marketing and promotions, taking bookings, re-activating lost customers, and doing employee onboarding and task management.” 

With sales relying on (dwindling) footfall, and systems running on sticky note reminders, WorkRex’s target customers were only hitting sub-30% email open rates, spending 2 hours a day doing manual follow-ups, and missing opportunities to delight and retain customers. 

One had only 20% of customers returning year on year.

With Skalata’s guidance, the founders saw a clear opportunity to target an underserved market, solve an even bigger, more valuable problem, and set sights on multiple industries.

Meet the problem

In 2024, it’s harder than ever for small & medium local businesses to compete. With enterprises investing millions each year on marketing and customer support, SMBs struggle to keep up with growing communication channels, customer and employee demands, all whilst showcasing their unique personality. 

With 3.5M companies in AU, US, and the UK alone facing this problem, WorkRex makes engagement more accessible and affordable compared to enterprise platforms that cost up to $100k per year.

The platform automates 80% of the grunt work in running personalised, large-scale campaigns, freeing up local businesses to focus on the conversations that truly matter. 

Meet the founders 

Jing is the resident optometrist, with 5 years working in practices across Australia. Lance is an ex-McKinsey consultant with prior experience at Redbubble. Myron comes from 4 years of Software Engineering in the education technology space, with experience at IXL Learning.

Lance says:

“I approach problems in a structured way and love to use data as the basis for any decisions. Jing injects creativity and authenticity into the way we built our early community. Myron always thinks about the fastest/simplest way to build our features and prototypes that let us iterate quickly.” 

The trio, who were housemates during the 2020/21 lockdowns, founded WorkRex in this period of…close collaboration. Rapid prototyping led to early customer validation, landing them a spot in the MAP 2023 cohort.

Meet the product

WorkRex has evolved from just connecting seller > staff to connecting seller > staff > customer. 

Australia’s 2.5 million SMBs don’t need high-barrier enterprise software (think an $100k annual subscription) to run a successful business. They need to affordably design and execute comms and marketing campaigns across multiple channels. 

WorkRex brings customer interactions into the current day, enabling instant comms via WhatsApp and personalising each experience. Reviews and feedback are automated, customer support is provided.

In the backend, employees are given to-do lists and notified of new tasks when their support is required by a customer

It’s basically a marketing and customer success team rolled into one AI-powered system.

Clients are discovering quick return on investment, in tangible forms like 2x-ing their 5 star Google reviews or 3x-ing the efficiency of recall systems.

The (twenty-twenty) vision: provide 1 million local businesses with the tools to create genuine and mutually rewarding relationships.

Meet the market

Lance says:

“With growth being the #1 priority for more than half of optometry practices we spoke to, many business owners want marketing support but are not sure where to start, or can’t afford to pay thousands of dollars each month to hire an agency. We’re excited to provide a simple and accessible solution.”

Amid the Great Digital Shift™, some industries have been left with no way to go full-online like retail (and none of the funding of medical). 

All kinds of health-related practices – aestheticians, PTs, physios – in fact, any kind of sale where seeing the product is a requisite (houses, cars) are grounded in the physical - relying on (dwindling) footfall, scribbling follow-up reminders on scraps of paper, and missing valuable opportunities as a result.

Mix that with tightened consumer purse strings, and you’ve got customers who only buy when they absolutely have to - and buy the cheapest option.

WorkRex’s research shows that people care about quality, safety, and trustworthiness. The experience has to be worth the trip. The aftercare has to be spot on. 

While providers are focused on high-touch, in-person service, WorkRex is running in the background - suggesting where in the funnel to focus marketing efforts, sending personalised welcome messages, and setting up check-ins.

Seeing into the future 

Far from the “dear sirs” and formal handshakes of ye olde sales days, the tone between business and consumer is becoming more conversational - facilitating genuine connections where AI will play a role (Sequoia’s recent US$85m investment in Sierra AI agrees).

In the works for WorkRex is an AI assistant that automates the campaign process - think one prompt and graphic that gets translated into campaigns optimised for SMS, WhatsApp, email, socials, and voice.

The magic lies with allowing high-touch practices to deliver a customer experience that’s usually only possible with a massive marketing team/budget.

Lance says:

“Skalata has shown constant curiosity about our unique insights, and delivered massive strategic support as we explored new directions. Skalata’s promise to offer more support at the seed stage than any other fund is what convinced us - now we’ve been working with them for a few months, I can wholeheartedly say they meant it.”

The tech has huge potential across any high-touch, low marketing budget practices - private practices, aesthetics clinics, physical maintenance services, and any high-touch sales environments. 

As we speak, the team is conducting a pilot with Velocity Vehicle Group, the exclusive dealership for Mercedes trucks across Australia, with more than 20 locations. They’re targeting customers in automotive, retail, and healthcare whilst continuing to grow with their foundational customer profile of optometry clinics like Luna Eyewear. 

As a frontrunner in the consumer connection space, who understands that genuine, human conversations and experiences are how businesses will differentiate in saturated markets, WorkRex is definitely one to one to watch. 

We can’t wait to see WorkRex roll out its AI features, help them focus on new target markets, and make many more eye-related puns in the near future.

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