Essential Install | Smart Thinking: Improving Service
Remove Your Blindfold!
Pete Baker, president of The BIG Corp sales
and business development agency and exvice president of sales and marketing at RTI,
underlines the need for remote monitoring.
Pete Baker underlines
the problem solving
and revenue
opportunities of
remote monitoring
It’s Friday night and it has been a long week. Finally, you get a chance
to sit down and stop. But, as soon you place your phone on the
counter it starts ringing. You peek at the screen and notice that it is
your VIP client. You can’t avoid this call; you pick up and realise that
your week isn’t over yet.
“I’m having a party at my house and nothing works, I need one
of your techs out here... now!” You calm your client down and then
start the process of troubleshooting over the phone with a frustrated
customer, totally blind.
Today, every company must be exceptional at one thing: providing
outstanding customer service. In regards to the above scenario, there
are three primary common problems that integrators would do well to
remedy. The dealer was blindsided by an urgent matter that must be
resolved quickly; the dealer was blind to the operating status of the
devices in the system, most importantly, the client paid a lot of money
and does not want to spend their leisure time troubleshooting.
There are a series of ‘device supervision’ products on the market
that do exactly this. They are relatively small – black boxes that need just
power and a network connection to monitor the operating status of all
devices on the network. Once connected to the network, these devices
can be configured to notify designated people when a device locks up
or attention is needed, e.g. if a battery on a remote must be replaced or
firmware updated. Some of the more advanced devices will allow you
to update software remotely or offer more sophisticated functions.
Device supervision products are often visible from a ‘dashboard’
on a computer or App-based interface of a smart phone or tablet.
These dashboards will allow you to view the operating status of all
network-attached devices in a system. Many will also offer the ability
to view historical data for the system. For instance, if a client calls on
Monday and complains about a ‘slow network’ on Friday, you could
roll the tape back and view the activity log to determine what may
have bogged down the network. This service does come with a small
investment in ‘cloud services’ like iCloud or Dropbox.
When I worked as an integrator (for 20 years of my career), I
would include a section in my proposals titled ‘Integration Hardware
and Materials’. This section would often include some of the following
items: surge protection/power conditioners, wire, interconnect
cables, IR systems, cooling fans, etc. I would often tell clients that
these were all the small parts and materials that were necessary
to make the system operate. This is where I suggest including
supervision devices. My justification to my client would remain the
same, just with one additional word at the end: ‘reliably’.
Monitoring can be handled in a few different ways, the easiest
being to add it into the price of the device and state that it includes
‘X’ many years of cloud supervision with additional years being billed
at a rate of $X/year or month. This can also be set up as an auto-bill
feature with most accounting systems.
Device supervision products are a very hot topic in the industry
at the moment, as are recurring month revenue (RMR) models. I
expect this to become a standard device in systems of the future
with many adopting this practice now. The benefit to the end user is
trouble-free enjoyment of their entertainment system. If the system is
complicated and troublesome, no one will recommend adding this
home technology to friends and family, but if it is enjoyable they will
be more likely to send referrals to you.
More information: Pete Baker, The BIG Corp, www.thebigcorp.com,
[email protected]
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