If you’re a smart home technology professional, you know the drill all too well.
With many of us still working from home and the strain on networks higher than ever before, customer expectations have only intensified. The internet should never go down. Their phones should always work at max speed. They should be able to stream 4K video while conducting video conferences, whenever they want. And when something goes wrong, they immediately call you to find out why.
Of course you want to keep your customers happy and minimize their downtime, so you send a technician to the scene, even though it takes you away from far more profitable activities.
The job doesn’t end once you’ve installed a home network and connected all devices. You’ve still got general upkeep and plenty of variables to contend with. Devices lock up. The internet goes down. New devices get added that require configuration or adjustments to the network. Firmware needs updating. People fiddle with things and make unintended changes that negatively impact the connected systems. Often, the fix is as simple as power-cycling the modem. But you have no way of knowing what needs doing until you go there and check it out.
It’s an expensive proposition. Unless you have a remote management service contract in place, it’s $150 out of your pocket just to think about rolling a truck, not to mention the time and money lost from other jobs. It’s also a big frustration and inconvenience for the homeowner, who might have to pay a per-incident fee and end up going days without a working system.
When you add it all up, the care and feeding of the network becomes a big deal for you in terms of balancing time management and customer satisfaction with generating new revenue opportunities. If you had a way to easily take care of customer satisfaction, you’d free up a lot of time to focus on what you really care about – generating new revenue opportunities.
A remote monitoring and management (RMM) system — which lets you connect to your customers’ networks from a browser and remotely monitor, manage, and configure devices connected to that network from anywhere — minimizes that balancing act and makes things much more efficient for you and your customers.
Just as exciting is that it can help you reach that holy grail all dealers seek: recurring monthly revenue. That’s because you can build RMM into the service contract from the outset, ensuring consistent income from RMM service fees; but, surprisingly, a lot of dealers still aren’t using it. And the ones who aren’t are missing out.
Imagine having a system that immediately alerts you in real time if something requires your attention, so you can get an idea of what’s going on at the site; troubleshoot from across town; and perhaps do some configuration, programming, or even cycle power without having to visit the customer. In this way, you can respond quickly and often fix issues remotely before they become real problems — sometimes before the customer even realizes there’s an issue at all.
And when there is a need for a service call, you’ll be aware of it sooner and can go armed with information from the RMM service that could help you fix it before it becomes an even bigger problem.
From your customers’ perspective, RMM translates to a more reliable solution and quicker response time for network issues, which leads to greater satisfaction and a more positive experience. It saves the customer the headache of network downtime and the expense of an in-person service call, and it keeps you from having to roll a truck to a location that’s potentially hours away.
When customers hear about RMM, it’s easy for them to see the value, which is why RMM should be part of your communications and sales strategy from the very beginning. Being able to remotely and proactively, say, get ahead of an internet outage, provides a level of support that wins customers’ hearts and minds. And it’s just one example of the many ways you can use RMM as a service to begin collecting recurring monthly revenue.
Whether you’re a custom integrator focused on residential installations or a commercial integrator dealing with light commercial applications like houses of worship, restaurants, and bars, if you haven’t tried an RMM solution yet, I encourage you to do it! RMM has the potential to transform your maintenance and service operation, creating more predictable scheduling and revenue and happier customers in the process.
Luxul ProWatch Cloud Management Solution Coming Soon
A free service for all Luxul dealers, ProWatch is easy to set up and makes it simple for integrators to remotely monitor their clients’ control systems, get real-time notifications of failures, and quickly resolve issues. The result is next-level customer service and an improved bottom line.
Setting up ProWatch cloud management is as simple as downloading the app to your phone, tablet, or opening the web-based application and creating a new site. ProWatch automatically discovers all IP devices on the network, including Legrand | AV and any third-party products. Integrators can then immediately access their customers’ control system from anywhere via the ProWatch app or an intuitive web interface. Site-level indicators provide the online/offline status of connected devices and the availability of firmware updates, while customizable alerts notify integrators of issues.
With ProWatch, integrators can configure devices remotely, perform firmware updates, and remotely power-cycle smart PDU and PoE-powered devices that fall offline. By allowing integrators to handle these simple system management tasks without rolling out a truck for a service call, the solution lowers operation costs and delivers a better experience for customers. In addition, Luxul ProWatch provides dealers with an opportunity to develop a recurring monthly revenue stream by selling the service as part of a remote management system (RMS) maintenance contract.
