Service CollABorative January 2025 - Meet the Member with Dallan Forsyth of Vivint

IFS Service CollABorative: Meet the Member with Dallan Forsyth of Vivint on Remote Service

Date of Meeting: 23 January 2025 10:00 AM US Eastern Standard Time

A Conversation between Dallan and Sarah:

• [Sarah] Dallan is joining us today to talk about Vivint's use of IFS remote assistance. to start, we have people on this call from not only the US but also different parts of Europe. So, just in case anyone isn't familiar with Vivint, can you just start with an overview of Vivint's business and then just tell everyone a bit about your role?
• [Dallan] Vivint is a smart home company here in the US. We do security systems, we do automation, so outdoor cameras, doorbell cameras, all sorts of stuff like that. We have interconnected through the home. So, we've got thermostats, smart locks, garage door controllers, all of that through a central hub on your wall in a unit that you can control all of that from one app seamlessly and see what's going on in your home at any time. From my side of things, I'm the director of customer solutions, so I handle all troubleshooting and billing and upgrade moves, anything of that handle for our US operations on our side. So, the need and I see all of the equipment if something comes up, if they run out of batteries, if they fall off line, if they unplug it somewhere, they have kids and they run around the house and they're unplugging something so, I see all the issues that arrive when something isn't working. And so that's where this tool has come in and helped us bridge that gap between us on our side and then being able to see what the customer's actually seeing in their home.
• [Sarah] Perfect. So, if you all will entertain me just really quickly including you, Dallan, I completely forgot about this, this was not premeditated but we have been Vivint customers for about 10 years. And when we moved into the house we live in now, my children were quite young. So two and ten months, and one day I picked up the baby and came home to start getting dinner ready. This is when I still worked in an office and my husband was picking up our older son from preschool and was bringing him home. And I get home and I put my baby in the little baby seat in the kitchen while I'm trying to get dinner ready. And he's not happy. He's probably teething or something. So, he's crying. I'm trying to keep him calm while I'm getting dinner going and I'm all stressed out. And dinner starts smoking and I was just trying to go back and forth between not letting things get out of control, and trying to keep the baby happy. And I had completely forgotten that I had my phone on do not disturb from my work day. And lo and behold, next thing I know the Fire Chief walks in our front door and it just so happened it was like at the same time that my husband was pulling in with our son. And he's like, what is the fire department doing here? It's a good testimonial in that it works, especially if Vivint is calling you to make sure everything's OK and your phone is on silent and you don't answer the call. So, it was just a really funny, chaotic moment of me just very flustered, saying I was just trying to make dinner. Totally off topic, but it just came to mind as we started talking and I had completely forgot about that. So that's what Vivint does and a little bit about your role.
• Can you set up for us what some of the challenges slash opportunities were that got you to the point where you wanted to look for a tool like remote assistance?
• [Dallan] So, there's a couple pieces to that. One, as I've mentioned, is we have a lot of different pieces of equipment and I mean I've been here for almost nine years, and we have 4 different panels that have come out since the time that I've been here. We have different camera versions, we have different camera models. And all those things create complexity when it comes to an individual knowing and understanding all of those things. It was hard when I was on the phones and so in that time, in that last six years, there's been even more product, more of those things added, while all the old stuff still remains. So, the complexity there is challenging enough. So then being able to see it understand what's happening for the customer, that isn't as familiar with that to be able to show us and say this is what I'm looking at and you being able to say oh, no, that's not it, that's not what I'm talking about. That is our product, but that's not the product that I'm talking about. It helps on that side.
• The other piece of this is that 85% of our employee base that handles these calls is offshore. We have call centres in the Philippines, in Columbia, and so those people have never seen a security system. How it functions, how it works and so for them, this is very foreign, right? They don't understand the US home structure. There's a lot of things that they don't understand in that regard. And so being able to put that and see that and then show them, they can see it live in the customer home. We give it to our brand new specialist right out of the gate, every single person gets this. So, they can be connected to what this actually looks like and give a more seamless experience. And that's what we're all trying to do right? If you call in because, you have a problem. And then I call in. I don't want there to be two different experiences on the same issue, because they're talking to someone different. And so being able to say hey, use this to help you gain that understanding of what's going on is really important both on that side, customer side and then just being able to see those things.
• [Sarah] OK, so there were some challenges in consistency of service and I would say efficiency, right? If you have the issue of trying to talk through what exactly is going on and obviously having a visual really helps with that. So, when you got to the point that you wanted to put a remote assistance tool in place, can you just talk a little bit about how and why you chose IFS specifically for that? 
• [Dallan] We had tested out different things and tried another company. The biggest thing that drove us to use this tool was the ability for each of our users to have individual licences. Other tools, it was shared licences and one of our super user team, they're called our virtual field technicians, we brought technicians from the field that had been trained out there and done multiple years of service into the field into the call centre to try to basically stop a work order from happening. So, we use their expertise to do it. Part of that experience is a virtual visit, so almost, I would say 98% of their calls, I don't want to say 100% because sometimes they're able to just solve it very quickly, but 98% of their calls, they use this tool on so they can set up that virtual visit and say, OK, I'm going to come into your home and help resolve this. And in order to do that, when we were testing this group originally and they had shared licences, we'd have people sitting there and they'd be like I need to use this and I can't because all of the licences are being used or the people that I'm sharing with it's being used. So one of the biggest selling points for us, was the ability to say OK individual licences. Everyone can have it, everyone can go use it. And that's why we've been able to expand it to our new hires, to everyone as they enter training and so that was one of the biggest things that we were able to identify and use in order to help us hold on this, and allow everyone just you use it. You can use it as much as you want. Here you go. And I think anyone that works in contact centred space or service space, you can understand that as an employee as well, if you don't have something and you can't rely on something you're not going to use it. And so we went into that issue where people were like, well, every time I go to use it, I can't. So, I'm just not even going to bother. I'll figure it out on my own. And so being able to open that up allowed everyone to say, Oh yeah, I can use that tool at anytime and go forth.
• [Sarah] Yeah, that's good point. There's a big enough barrier to just introducing something new and getting people to not only to accept it, but ideally to be welcoming of it. And if they can't rely on it, that's a non-starter, so that makes sense.
• You mentioned that you have this team of virtual field technicians, so those are former field technicians that you've brought into the call centre to do these virtual visits, to ideally avoid having to do an on-site visit. So, in 2024, they resolved over 57,000 work orders remotely and the part I want you to talk about here is that team has achieved a 75% success rate in solving issues that previously would have required a technician visit. Can you talk a little bit about how having this in place helps you to more accurately determine what can be resolved remotely and get that done to avoid sending someone on site for something that could have or should have been able to be taken care of otherwise.
• [Dallan] Just to provide a little bit of context. Our frontline teams, we have three different tiers of service, and they handle different pieces of the product. If they get to a point in certain flows. So, there's some of them that regardless of who to touches this, it's very linear. And so, we know if it gets to this point, it doesn't matter who to you are, you're not solving it. But cameras, internet networking, those types of things, the expertise of seeing that and understanding that is much larger. If the frontline team gets to a point where they're going to send a work order on certain products, instead of sending that work order, will let the customer know, hey, at this time I have a virtual field technician that can actually do a virtual visit and try to resolve this right now. They have a high success rate and that's how they get to that team. In previous state that would have just been cut off right there. We sent the work order and go from there. As you mentioned we only send technicians on 20 to 25% from the VFT team, which would have been 100% before. So, the way that they utilise this tool, give a few examples.
• One where I took a call, and then another one, it was honestly really simple but being able to see it and use the tool was there. So, the one from our virtual field technician, the customer wasn't getting power to their panel. They couldn't find the plug anywhere. Our technicians, when they go out there, they will find the closest plug that they can find so they don't have to run wire throughout the whole home and make it wherever it needs to be. And so, the technician that had ran this home had taken the wire and ran it up along the door jamb and put it up on the ceiling and plugged it in up there. The regular agent couldn't identify that, and couldn't see it, but as soon as the virtual field technician got that, showed the video and then was like OK, see that wire follow it and then they could use the camera to follow it up the wall and see where it was plugged in. And he was like, OK, it's plugged in right there. See how it's not plugged in right now? Go plug that in. And it was a simple fix where they could have waited for the technician to come and the technician would've showed up and said, Yep, here you go and pushed it in, and would have had to be there.
• The one that I experienced on a phone call that I took, and it was very similar to what I said earlier. We have a bunch of different products in the home. The customer was looking at something and saying I'm doing this, I'm unplugging it. I'm doing it. And then when she turned on the Camera and showed me it was like oh, no, that's not it. The device right there, I can see it in the corner over there. Do that one. She was able to do that. And then the other piece on that same call that helped me was on the back of some of our cameras, there's a light. And in order to reset it, you have to hold down the button and see the light. Well, she couldn't see the other side because of where it was on her house. And so she put the camera on the other side of the of her phone on the other side of the camera. Pushed the button down and I watched the colour of the light and I said OK, release it now. And she was able to reset it because she wasn't holding it long enough before. And so both of those things, I was able to see something that they couldn't see, but also just see, oh, no, you're not touching the right thing or for the technician before he could see, oh, follow this wire. Here's where it is. I have this experience. I know where it is. And was able to solve 2 easy things. It was just miscommunication of what they were looking at.
• [Sarah] So there's a couple things I want to talk about. One is just to emphasise those were simple things, right? But without that visual, without that technology, they would have ultimately required someone going out there to see what's going on and when we talk about really taking inefficiencies out of service operations, it's a really good example of what that is like in real life. Because today, a lot of the conversation around AI and everything, it's great and it can add a layer of sophistication, but at the end of the day, if you have these simple things that could be done remotely, that you're not doing remotely, and you're still sending someone out every time a wire needs plugged in, that's where companies need to be really starting. There's so much efficiency to be gained by looking for those types of instances. The other thing I wanted to say is how important it is now we can talk about this in a bit, but there are a lot of organisations that are also leveraging remote assistance from company to technician, not necessarily company to customer. But in a customer context, you also have to really think about the aptitude of your customers, but also the bandwidth of patients you're going to get. Because if you're trying to do this in an inefficient way, if you're trying to do this over the phone and you can't see what they see, think about how quickly they're going to get annoyed or frustrated and turn to saying like just send someone here to freaking fix this. I'm paying you and I don't want to spend 1/2 an hour on the phone trying to go through this. So, one thing I was hoping you could talk about in that regard is how the user interface of this tool for the customer is very simple? Because that's one potential challenge I think people think through when they think about using a remote assistance tool. If it's going to be cumbersome for the customer to log into, to pull up, to use, that could be a huge barrier to acceptance. So, can you talk about what that looks like on their end?
• [Dallan] This is another reason why we went in this direction. One of the other companies that we had tested was you have to download an app. And it was like, OK, but the people that actually need the help with this can't download the app. That’s the people that I need to help with this tool. And so literally all you have to do is you sign in, you send the link via a text message and it pops up on their phone. They click on the link, they give us a code, and we're on our way. So super simple and you are correct in that ease of use of being able to go there is huge for us. As we're already trying to get them to do complex things, adding another complex thing to the mix to try to make it easier for us is a non-starter.  And so being able to just send that link, they click on the link, give us the code and we're in, is great. I think from that standpoint, as I said it was one of the selling points for us to make sure we could we could go through that.
• [Sarah] And again, it comes back to having that customer centric mindset. Thinking about the fact that a lot of times people might be taking time off work to deal with this or whatever it is and they're not going to have any interest. I think this is when self-service starts to get a bad rap. When we make it very cumbersome and time consuming for people, no, they don't want to engage in that. If it can be quick and simple and it avoids them having to schedule time for someone to come out to do something that took 60 seconds, then it's a win for everyone. Now on the other end of that, even if this were a situation or in situations where the tool is being leveraged company to technician, ease abuse is just as important. And so yes, you could ask your technicians to download the app, but do they want to have to leave and go to a different app and all of that. So, it's just something that is important to think about.
• [Dallan] So one of the groups that I have ran here at Vivint was our CAP creation team that helped the field on their end when they were out in the field. And when you think about what they're doing, they're constantly with their hands and doing things. So, them being able to sit there and be like, OK, now I'm stopping what I'm doing to do this, makes it that much harder on their side to say I've got to now use my hands that I'm using to help support this or solve this, and now I need your help but now I've got to do something else to figure that out. So, I think I think that's huge.
• [Sarah] So I was hoping you could talk a little bit about, just keeping on the topic of this tool being very simple to use on both sides. You were able to train 1500 agents on the tool in just two weeks. Can you talk a little bit about that initial training and the simplicity of it? But then you're also continually engaging with them to give them tips to incentivize them on making sure that they are focusing on remote resolution, those sorts of things. So, if you can talk a little bit about the initial roll out and the simplicity of that, but also how you've kept them motivated and engaged.
• [Dallan] First, I'd be remiss if I didn't say, like my implementation team that we have is sensational. For any new process or any new thing that we do, they have a very stringent guideline of this is what we're doing. This is how we're making sure it rolls out. This is the training we're giving. If we're following up with the module, how do we make sure our tools are updated. That is their bread and butter, but also at the same time, I think anyone in change management knows, a new process, a new thing that you're entering in, has its challenges and making sure that you're making it simple and putting it in the best light. And I think teaming that up with the ease of use and saying, OK, this is really easy to use, you don't have to use that brain power because as I've said, multiple pieces of equipment, they're trying to troubleshoot. So, anything that's complex, it can get pushed off to the side because I'm already thinking too much. I can't think more. So being able to roll that out and say, OK, it’s clear, where you want to use it, what you want to do? We went through all of our flows beforehand and said OK, here are the exact flows that we want you to use it on. And so, when they're going through their troubleshooting steps and they enter in that step, it will say hey, don't forget you have this tool. Start to use it and then they know, and that's the reminder of OK, it's here. I remember we talked about this. Now I can use it. So, we train them on, here's how the tools used in their team meetings went through all of that, and then within that day we were also updating the flow. So as soon as they went back on the phones, and they were looking at their flaws, and they're going through those steps, all of a sudden that was popping up and reminding them from the very get go. Hey, don't forget you have this tool you were just trained on. And there's the instructions even in that step of this is how you do it. This is how you go through that process. So, there's constant reiteration of use of the tool. It will help you here. Here's the step to use it on. Make sure you use it in this in this regard. So I think those things have helped us really to make sure that we've got it, as well as we've continued through this journey, it's sharing those experiences back. As we go to leadership summits, even out of our own out of outside of our own organisation, showing the examples to the company to show why this is so important and why we use this tool. We've done that multiple times at higher levels that our supervisor levels to remind them and say hey, don't forget this tool's there, and that just reiterates in their minds as well. Oh yeah, as I go back, I'm going to push this with my teams. Oh, yeah, could we use this tool? And all those things have come up. And as we continue to push on that, it has become a part of who we are as a department. We use this tool, it's part of who we are and that's what we want it to be. And I think everyone's grasped that we use this tool and it's just what we do.
• [Sarah] Talking about the speed at which this can be deployed is important because I understand your team is great. I've talked to other IFS customers that have also deployed this tool quite rapidly. And I think it's important to emphasise that point only because, there are more complex, more involved technology assessments that you have to as a service leader bide your time to argue for or ask for the investment in, and oftentimes service leaders are looking for those quicker wins. And that can help you build the case for a bigger project. So, this is I think a technology specifically, it can be used within FSM, but it also can be deployed as a standalone and so it’s one of those things which again you can pretty quickly get it up and running and pretty quickly start to extract that inefficiency. And it has quite a huge impact, so it's quite compelling in that regard.
• [Dallan] We had agreed and said yes, this is what we're doing, we were testing within 10 days. We had our first users testing and integrating and making sure that it was using within a week to 10 days. It was very quick as far as we're good, and then obviously it was us getting ready on our side. I think you guys could have moved a lot quicker than what we were wanting to make sure we had all the training we had all that stuff buttoned up on our side so it was successful. But as far as that goes, we probably held it up more than what the tool could have done and implemented on our side. Because, as I said we were, we were testing much quicker than that.
• [Sarah] I want to talk about one more part and then I want to also just talk about how some of the other applications for this technology. So the piece want to want to touch on is customer satisfaction. But also, I want to ask a question about that. So, the Virtual Field Technician team has achieved a 4.8 out of five rating and you've had many customers express appreciation for the prompt efficient service that remote assistance enables. So that's great and I think it speaks to the great preparation on your part and the good execution and also the simplicity of the tool. If it were cumbersome, that wouldn't be your fault, but your customers would be saying no thank you. It's good that you that you have that. What I'm curious about though is if you had to overcome any initial resistance to get to those CSAT levels. Did you have any customers when you said, hey, we can do this virtual service visit, we can send you this link that initially were like no thanks. And how did you navigate that or have people been generally very open to it?
• [Dallan] I think in service it's always hit and miss. You have people that are going to be resistant regardless, but I think it was a learning for our side more than it was for the customers. And I think our customers have also started to understand. We used to have CSAT comments where they will call out, Oh yeah, they use this tool. Why didn't the previous person use that? And we can take that back to the first Rep and say, hey, if you would have used this, you could have helped the customer, and they're like, oh, yeah, I see that. But I think a lot of the issues you ran into is any new thing rolls out, it's how do I make sure I get this into the customer's understanding, so they know what to expect. If you just throw it on the customer and you're like well, we can do this, but I don't know if it'll work or not. Yeah, of course they're going to be like, well, no, I don't want to spend more time doing this. But as you have that confidence to say yes, this will work. We have this team that can do this virtual visit. Here's what it'll do. And so, we don't have to send someone out. Are you willing to do that for another 10 minutes? Yes. I'm willing to do that. I'll take the 10 minutes and go through that process. So, for me, I think it was the selling point on our side of making sure the customer understood what they were walking into. And it wasn't just more time, more effort on my side. And then I'm not going to get the results that I want anyways. And I'm still going to have to spend the four hours in my house waiting for someone to come and go through that.
• [Sarah] I think you know it's good to have those scores and to have those comments because not only does that build the confidence internally about the use of the tool, but you can leverage those to put people at ease if they do have some concern or what have you. Listening to your story, like I said, I get really excited about the potential for remote service, remote assistance and other self-service, remote diagnostic, remote triage tools, because I think it's such an area of opportunity for service organisations right now. There are people that have it in place and are leveraging it, but I don't think it's anywhere near the majority. And I think as we look for how do we automate? How do we achieve the next level of efficiency and innovation? It's really thinking about what are we doing today that is not the best use of our time, that is inefficient and what capabilities matched with a little bit of creativity can we apply to eliminate that. And it can have such a significant impact, but it makes me think of some other use cases. We have organisations who are leveraging this tool. To have maybe an older technician, someone nearing retirement that doesn't want to be out in the field every day anymore, to help support younger less experienced technicians. Because again, they can go out in the field knowing that when they encounter something they're unsure of, they can tag this person in literally to see what they see and to help coach them along what they need to do. Which I think is really amazing. So, there's the company to customer, there's company to technician and the other big one is leveraging really significant internal expertise. So, this came up with another customer of ours, Munter's actually during the pandemic because they had a situation where when they open a new facility they have a handful of individuals that would go and do a lot of quality assurance checks and inspections and things like that, and there was only these few people in the organisation that were equipped to do this. And when travel became difficult they had to look for another way. Started leveraging this and then realised why are we flying these people all over the world all the time when we can use something like this to accomplish the same goal. And to your point, having success in your function and having other functions in Vivint see that and start thinking, how could we apply this to what we do to take out some of these inefficiencies? If you just spend some time really thinking about how could something like this help us do some of these things virtually, remotely, you can really come up with some interesting ideas and ones that again, can be pretty quickly put in place and have a real return in a quite short window of time.

Questions / Answers / Feedback / Responses:

• Q: I was just wondering about augmented reality. Have you able to have some trial or seeing a full-fledged roll out and how does it go? We have a construction manufacturing set up basically. And some of them are very legacy systems that have worked for years and we are doing digitalization and so on, but it will be good to see a good level of trial so that we can know how to map out our strategy. We already have some strategy so to say, but with other partners we wanted to know how to scale it better. So, it will be good to know where has it worked and how did it go.
• A: That's good question. I should be careful about the terminology that I'm throwing around. IFS remote assistance, technically they refer to it as a merged reality tool versus an augmented reality tool. I tend to use those terms interchangeably and so just to clarify that, I think the reason they refer to it as merged versus augmented is because you're able to do some annotation and things like that to work back and forth, but what we just talked through with Dallin, so they have put this tool in place with 1500 virtual technicians. 1500 agents. So, the way they're using this tool from their call centre, their customer service operation directly to customers. Other organisations that that we work with have also used this tool from the back office to the frontline field technicians to support them in the work they're doing. Vivint's use case though is directly with their customers to see if they can resolve some of these issues in virtual session versus having to send someone on site.
• Q: Now when you deploy the agents, I'm sure annotating them to be with specific process, so to say because those agents need to be given process where they will need to work. There's going to be a good level of sequential process for each agent and for timing. Has it been done with other to anything related to construction or manufacturing? Are we using to agents deployed to help technician or to help engineers on site or somewhere?
• A: Here are a couple of articles on some of our other customers that are using remote assistance in more of the company to technician or company to employee way.
  • https://www.futureoffieldservice.com/2020/04/02/munters-meets-todays-business-needs-while-setting-the-stage-for-servitization-success/
  • https://www.futureoffieldservice.com/2020/07/06/alfa-laval-drives-service-excellence-with-remote-assistance/
  • https://www.futureoffieldservice.com/2020/07/20/panasonic-sharpens-its-service-strategy/

• Q: I work B to B mostly with the desks. we use other tools, but I like the fact that you really honed in on the fact that sending somebody an app or telling a download an app is negative. We found that and the fact that we could send a code out and somebody just links in is was a great thing. Two questions for you. How are you getting on where your customers learn? Have you found that in initially you had a lot of customers ringing in with, with similar problems and then you saw the curve go in the opposite direction? We work B to B and we had a really successful national operating company and they were like hitting really big numbers of affixes with the visualisation tool. And then suddenly it dropped. And when I asked them, they said it's one of the best teaching tools we ever had because where we were trying to describe something the customer never learnt. But when the customer was actually doing it, and we were just their brains and they were the hands, because they use their hands it they learnt. So, they didn't ring in for the same problems. Is that something you find with it or is it something that you've not been able to measure yet?
• A: We haven't ran into that issue yet. Hopefully I will take that issue if that happens in reference to not even having the call. We haven't run into it yet just because we've really been ramping the Super users who are the virtual field technician team, so we've continued to have more calls than they can actually handle on their side, so we're not at a point yet in that regard. I will say from the customer's learning in that standpoint, I think it has in regard to we will have customers request that from the beginning. Like hey, I've used this tool in the past, can we use it? Or I have talked to this team in the past, Can I talk to them? Because they see the value of that and so they are they're learning in that regard that hey, this is this is helpful, this is more efficient, how do we just use this from the get go instead of having to walk through something without it. And then I would say on both of the examples that I used of where I felt like those were there, it opens their eyes as well to see it isn't as hard as I think. Because we have so many pieces of equipment, it can be intimidating for that customer to say I don't know what I'm doing, but really a lot of the stuff is very simple. But being able to tell them that is different than being able to being able to show them that as they see it, they're like Oh yeah, that was simple. Oh yes, my son did unplug this or whatever it is. And that's why it's disconnected. They can have those realisations and say, OK, I'll give you the patience the next time that I call in and not try to demand to send someone out right now because it could just be the simple thing. And I think that more than anything has been one of the biggest wins is that their understanding and giving us that patience on our side because we are so successful at just resolving it. that they stop and think, OK, they solved it last time. Let's do that so I don't have to sit there and wait for the technician to come to my home.
• R: You actually bring up such a critical fundamental point. In this context, Vivint customers are paying a subscription and they're paying a subscription for things to work, but if you can resolve issues remotely, it's a win-win. Now it's a completely different discussion for an organisation who has traditionally relied on on-site visits for revenue. And so your point is a phenomenal point and it's a different conversation, but here's where I would urge people to really still consider how this fits in two ways.
• One is, I did a podcast last year with a gentleman from Mettler Toledo (see below for link) and we had a conversation about remote service and essentially we were talking about the reality that the state of the industry and the sophistication of the technology, the ways that we've been working, they shouldn't continue. I mean it just doesn't make sense for anyone to operate that inefficiently. But what Stephen said is in their organisation, specifically through the nature of the equipment etcetera, they will never not resolve issues on site. But what they were doing is one to two triage visits before they ever had a visit for resolution. So, the application for them of this type of technology is not at all to replace on site visits. It's to eliminate any triage visits because they were doing one to two truck rolls prior to the truck roll for resolution. So again, what those clear examples of inefficiency are, are going to be different business to business, but they almost always exist. So, that's one point.
• The second point though is I really encourage the people that have this visceral reaction to remote service of, well, we can't monetize that, to think differently. Because what's happening is you're so accustomed to a transactional narrative that you're not thinking about how to shift the narrative to value. Because at the end of the day, there is still value to your customer if you can resolve their issue in 15 minutes instead of them waiting until the next day or longer for someone to come to them and do it themselves. So, yes, it requires a broader business conversation, because then you're changing the overall customer value proposition, not only the service delivery function. But it's still a very worthwhile conversation. So, I'm just really glad that you said that because I was so focused on Vivint's application that I was not really thinking about some of those challenges. I think it it's more so really pushing ourselves to think beyond what that customer relationship has always looked like and think about to your point, Dallan, even though you're talking about internally, it's still, how do you sell it. There is value here. If people are resisting it, it doesn't mean that it'll never work. It means you're not doing a good job of selling it. You're not doing a good job of articulating it in the terms that matter to them. And that's where we need to do some work.
• Q: Do you in your system show their face. So, I can see you now, you can see me. You get that empathy from the customer because one of the things that I always worry about when we make telephone calls to customers is they can't see the engineer. The engineer can't see what the customer is doing. There's a lack of empathy, and I used to get a lot of negativity when you went to account reviews with customers about the fact that our remote first was all about saving us money. When we started to use visualisation and the person saw the engineer at the other side, or even just the agent was using a prompt, they got the feeling that they were dealing with the person and not a process. So, the question is, do your agents show their face?
• A: No one can see each other. And most of the time, we don't see the customer because they're holding their phone and the camera's facing the way of the equipment. There will be the occasional one where they they'll hit the button and they're staring at it as they're trying to show us. And we're like, wait, wait, flip the camera around, but we don't, we don't show that on our side.
• Q: Obviously the data disappears as soon as the call finishes. So, nothing, no access back to the customs phone and so try?
• A: Yes correct. But I will say I think that's where some of the hesitancy also came from when we use the other one that didn’t have an app that you had to download. It's like we'll now I have the app on my phone. What do you want me to do? You can delete it, that's fine, but there there's still that hesitancy of putting something on my phone and it's not just this link that they go and then it's gone.
• Q: You had a good point, which is there's nothing saved of theirs or on their phone, but are you able to capture these sessions? If you want to capture the resolution? If you want to keep track of what's happening, are there common things?
• A: Yeah. We could, and have those on our side if we wanted to. We also through our phone system use screen capture. So, if we ever do need to find something, we can also go use that and utilise that in that regard and say OK, I can see it because it was on their screen while they were doing the phone call. Sometimes we'll utilise it in that regard too.
• R: What I was thinking actually is less about your instance specifically and more thinking about for the organisations who might be leveraging this from back office to field technician. Another secondary benefit of the tool can be how it can help with knowledge management. Because one of the challenges for businesses is that those older really skilled, experienced technicians have all of this knowledge that maybe hasn't been documented. If you're archiving these sessions and then you can even use AI to pool them and find the commonalities or create documentation or training materials out of that, that has tremendous value on its own.

• Q: Great presentation. It's a very good utilisation of the technology. My question is in regards to the responsibility of the execution. Once it's the customer doing whatever you're saying them to do, you are essentially transferring the responsibility of the execution to them. Has there been a liability issue in your in your case? And how do you handle this?
• A: We've troubleshot for a long time there. There are certain things that we will check with them. So if they're doing an outdoor camera, they're doing garage door controllers, a prime example. Most of those are up on the ceiling and they have to do that. So we will read a height disclaimer, and if they at that time, no, I'm not willing to do that, then we will send a technician. There’re certain sensors that we have, my motion sensor is up in the up in the side of the ceiling and so it's high enough and I'm 6’4 but I still can't reach it. So, if that instance comes up, we do have liability things that will read out and make sure that they are you comfortable doing this? If not, then we're not going to do it. But most things outside, there's outdoor cameras you can run to that issue, garage door controllers. Sometimes some of the sensors, but most of our equipment is lower. The door window sensor, it's on a window or a door that is right there for you to touch. So, we don't have a tonne of that come up and but obviously yes, there is definitely times where we have to bypass that where customers say, no, I’m not going to do that.

• F: I was just going to say this is just wonderful. I'm just thinking of how quickly we can answer emergency calls when we have limited technicians and sometimes finding a resource is challenging or with the changing world, with pandemics and everything, I think is just going to help this. So, you gave me a lot of things to think about and share with the rest of my team. So thank you very much.
• R: We have the same problem. We have technicians all over the United States, but there's also areas where they're an hour and a half away or where I live, I have a technician that's 45 minutes away, but he only comes here on Thursdays. So, if I don't want to wait till Thursday or the next Thursday's full, it's two weeks out, there are those instances where we do have a technician that can come, but it's a week and a half out or whatever it is, and so being able to being able to solve that in that manner and being able to take that off their plate is huge, so that one, the tech doesn't have to come here, but also the customer doesn't have to sit there and wait while you're trying to figure out how you manoeuvre people around.

• Q: You touched a little bit on it. It was around disclaimers. Sometimes when you are connecting with the customer, I don't know if you're using any of this content for training purposes or anything like that. But are there any other disclaimers that you use? Such as the customer has to accept before they head into the call, because you're seeing their house, the background, that kind of stuff and the customer might feel uncomfortable like, oh, is this call going to be recorded or are they going to see certain things my house that I don't want them to see, that kind of thing.
• A: Yeah, I believe there is something as they enter into the link that states hey, we're not accessing all the rest of your camera and/or and your phone and all that stuff. So, there is a disclaimer on the remote assistance side on that side. We don't say anything in particular. If someone brings something up, we will say, oh no once this link is gone I'm gone, I'm out I'm out of the system. You can end the session at any time, we'll tell them that as well. If you're say no, I don't want to do this anymore, you can end the session and we'll then go on our way and we'll solve the call regardless. And so because of because of that, we haven't ran into any problems of someone being an upset or anything in that regard.

Podcast:

• 3 Ways Remote Capabilities Are Significantly Changing Service
  Field Service Industry Insights | Future of Field Service

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• 13 February 2025 10:00 AM US ET / 15:00 GMT / 16:00 CET
  IFS Assets CollABorative: Tech Talk: Determining Repair v Replace
   
• 18 February 2025 10:00 AM US ET / 15:00 GMT / 16:00 CET
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• 20 February 2025 10:00 AM US ET / 15:00 GMT / 16:00 CET
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