At SafeWise, our bread and butter
all boils down to home security.
We live and breathe for those messy details
about popular security systems.
So, when we had the chance to meet
with seven of the biggest brands,
you better believe that we jumped at the opportunity.
This year, we got a chance to meet with the people
behind all of these systems.
Among them were CEOs, product specialists
and brand reps who shared upcoming projects
and let us grill them with a few questions.
During our meetings,
I asked each team the same five questions,
and a few of their answers really surprised me.
So, stick around to hear it
straight from the security horse's mouth.
If you want to learn more about any of these brands,
check out our lineup of the best home security systems
on SafeWise.com.
And like and subscribe to us here on YouTube
for more exclusives like this.
For my first question,
I wanted to see what the brands were most proud of
or excited about over the last year.
Here's what a few of them had to say.
The Abode Cam 2. That's been a game-changer for us.
It's a very inexpensive camera,
coming in at a price point of $34.99.
The ability to control different parts of the product
using our voice remote.
So, you can use the voice remote to turn on the lights,
turn off your lights, dim the lights
change your thermostat settings.
We also added the ability to see your cameras on your TV,
and you can use your remote to bring that up as well.
So, you can say "Show the front door camera."
And the other good thing about the voice remote
is it's not an always-listening device.
So, some people don't like devices in their homes
that are always listening. So this is one that only works
when you press that voice button,
and then you can call into it.
It's not sitting there like Google or Alexa
and listening all the time.
The Allstate Identity Protection
as a key feature in our offering.
I think this has really tremendous value for our customers.
And it's one of those things that customers really,
they're looking for their lives to be protected
when they're engaging with us,
not just their homes or their possessions.
And so, I think their identity, their family members,
it's all an important part of that trust model.
We recently launched an outdoor camera
within the last month,
and we've seen really strong demand
from both our current customer base and new customers.
I've been working in home security for a few years.
You start to hear a lot of the same messages.
So I wanted to know what these brands thought
was their best feature,
and what made them stick out from the crowd.
So having the ability to have smart home control
and your full security system
really gives that additional peace of mind,
and then that ability to also control things
from lighting, to sensors, to anything else
that you can think of in the smart home system.
ADT is really good on the monitoring side,
with their nine different call centers
around the US that kind of back up the monitoring sites
if the center does go down.
They always have those eight other call centers
to back that up.
We control, we own the network and the infrastructure
of that network right at Cox.
So, we're the largest privately owned
broadband company in the country.
And for that, as you know how security systems work,
so they all rely on summoning the police,
the fire department or medical team in time of emergency.
The good news about Cox is we own that network.
So that's the backbone network
that a lot of security companies have relied on
for their own communications, and we own that.
With so much development happening in the home security
and smart home world, there are sure to be changes.
We wanted to know where these brands saw space
for improvement and what they had ideas for
in addressing these gaps.
It's highly fragmented, and we have multiple apps
with multiple devices, and it's challenging to control
all of those together.
I would say the big gap, though, is trying to understand
what Google and Amazon and some of the big, big companies
or much bigger, what they're gonna do
in the space moving forward.
I think that the relationship with Google and ADT is huge.
Home automation space and home security,
I think has been blending a lot over time
and that's what we're trying to,
one of things we look at is "What automation pieces
do we wanna to pull into home security,
and what pieces should stay fully as home automation?"
And I think that line is blurry,
and I think that's actually good, but it's helping identify
what's gonna be complementary to our offering
and what should we keep standing alone as is.
Security industry kind of gets dinged
for not being all that transparent.
Having hidden charges, long agreements, things like that.
And one of the things that Cox has done this year,
starting back in March, was we adjusted our pricing
and we did away with some of the fees
that we've had in the past.
So, we're trying to be more transparent with our customers.
When you go with the full-service professional install,
you give up some flexibility,
you have to have people in your home,
you have to opt for a window,
you have to schedule if something goes wrong,
you have to call them, you have to come out,
you have to be there.
And so, what we're trying to do is work
where we see the niche and the gap is,
to empower the customer to be able to manage that
on their own with a little bit of help from us.
And then, in return getting the full service complemented
in terms of high quality app, monitoring video capabilities,
equipment that is really the best in the industry.
In terms of SimpliSafe in particular,
like I know the outdoor camera was something
that we really focused on, that we had a lot of demand for.
So, in terms of SimpliSafe, that definitely filled the gap
in terms of our product menu, I guess you could say,
and this is probably something simply we focus on a lot
is finding ways that we can get
not only home security 24-7 with peace of mind,
but "How can we probably provide additional value
to our customers?"
So, whether it's through insurance savings
or whether it's through making sure we're stopping
any kind of hazard event going on in the home,
like really just focusing on that 24-7
whole home protection,
and "How can we just get better as a society in industry
to do the best by our customers
to make sure everyone is as secure as possible?"
I think one of the bigger gaps for consumers
is they don't really know where to start,
and they may buy a doorbell from one company
and an indoor camera from another
and security from another,
and then that ends up with a really,
we think pretty bad customer experience
because they're hopping between apps,
their devices aren't aware of each other
and kind of creates a cumbersome experience.
So, we have a philosophy that we wanna own
the whole experience from the ground up,
and that allows us to build on
more rich customer experiences.
Everything from knowing your occupancies,
so we can do things like adjust your temperature,
be comfortable when you're home,
save you money when you're not,
to being able to trigger alerts
based on if your doorbell sees a person.
We can turn on lights automatically,
we can close your garage door,
we can do all kinds of things,
because we own that fully integrated experience.
We think we have the best platform in smart home,
and we plan to continue to build on that,
to just make better experiences for customers
with their smart home products.
And just for fun, we made them choose.
Doorbell cameras.
Cameras.
Indoor cameras.
Only one thing I think: cameras.
Well, that was overwhelmingly the most popular answer;
it makes sense.
Here are a few more unique answers that we got.
Light bulbs would be the other thing for me;
I'll throw in there.
I like to call them "sexy light bulbs."
The smart locks are hugely underrated.
Like, they're super convenient for me
as a father of young kids, that my kids can come and go,
and I don't have to worry about them losing a key
or doling out keys or anything like that.
Three weeks ago, my flood sensor saved my entire basement.
And I know it's not security,
as a lot of us think about security,
but we have a stairwell that goes down to the basement,
and we have a little exercise room down there,
so we're not in there that often.
And we had tons of rain, the gutter flooded,
and our drain down there got clogged.
And we had about two feet of water piled up
against the door outside and just a slow trickle
under the door, but I put a flood sensor there
knowing that that's a potential entry point for water.
And yeah, I mean that thing...
I've always been surprised at Cove,
how many of the positive customer comments that we get
are focused around that flood sensor.
I'd probably say if I had to pick one,
it'd be our motion sensor.
From a SimpliSafe perspective,
I think tagging on to what Mark's saying,
where I think the motion sensor is incredibly valuable,
I'd be torn between entry sensors,
so full perimeter protection for the home.
Alternatively, our indoor camera
which has motion capabilities built into it.
So, not only do you get alerted,
but you can see what's also going on,
which is something I think is valuable
from knowing everything in your home situation.
Finally, we wanted to know what was coming out
from each of these brands next year.
Without spilling any of the secret sauce,
here is what they said.
Some illuminating products, let's say (chuckles).
Get the Google stuff going.
We wanna to make sure that's going,
which is now taking place, and then build that relationship.
And then just make sure we have that five-star experience
just to grow and grow. That's our ultimate goal.
In 2022, we're planning on adding (beep sound)
We're gonna be refreshing most of our (beep sound).
We're gonna be really focused on helping our customers
and potential customers to really understand it.
So, like educate better on what our offering really has.
More integration, and Aaron talked a little bit
about the integration with the voice remote control.
Now, the ability to look at your cameras on your TV,
if you're one of our TV customers,
or if you have our Contour Stream Player,
which is an inexpensive device.
So, looking at how we can expand that,
what we call internally kind of "better together,"
how do we make things better together?
So, if you've got more products from Cox,
how does one plus one equal three?
So we're thinking about,
for us is "How we do a better job of humanizing the brand
and putting things more in terms of how it relates,
to how the customer can relate to it?"
And then everything that we're doing from our product design
to our customer service, to our billing support,
or even the way we pre-manage the sales process
is putting the customer front and center as our beacon.
Making sure that as many people as possible
can get protection at an affordable cost.
Adding additional options for them
and creating that flexibility that,
we know everyone doesn't want the same system,
so how can we provide kind of a flavor
for all these different kinds of people
in the home security market?
We feel like we are the leader
in the smart security space,
and we're gonna continue to expand
on our Smart Deter features, which is prevention of crime
or prevention of things that you don't want happening,
from happening.
Like I said before,
we won't be giving out any 2022 spoilers,
but we are really excited about what these brands
have coming next year.
So be sure to stick around and subscribe
to our channel for the latest updates on Abode,
ADT SafeStreets, Cove, Cox Homelife,
Frontpoint, SimpliSafe, and Vivint.
Thanks to you for watching,
and thanks to all of these folks from these brands
for meeting up with us.
Stay safe.
(Soft harmonic-instrument playing)