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Imagine a day when central station services become obsolete. Impossible… central station service offerings are expanding in a variety of directions and the potential of these services have not even yet been tapped into… right? While new recurring revenue streams are available today, there is also an underlying threat at play that could hurt central stations.
It's a scary thought. When contemplating the issue, your mind naturally goes to a specific word beginning with the letter "C." You are right to consider competition as a likely threat; but the "C" word of greater concern is commoditization.
The chance that central station services could become commodity-valued would represent one of the most dangerous situations ever faced by the industry. If this is allowed to happen, consumer loyalty could become merely a pleasant memory of the past. Chances are that alarm users would likely select their central station services in much the same way as you buy gasoline—simply by price!
The long-term success of central station service providers is completely dependent upon the quality of the emotional connection you create with your customer base. The core of that connection is based upon a customer's level of dependence on your services. By increasing the level of dependency users have on your service makes it consumer-value driven.
STRAYING FROM THE OH SO FAMILIAR
In the "old days" that connection was a lot easier to make. Alarm service users seemed to clearly understand the role and value of the central station. They appreciated the renewable and familiar peace of mind created each time they spoke one-to-one with a caring operator, whose reassuring voice was all they needed until the police arrived.
Then, communications technology turned to the "digital voice attendant." Most service businesses including central stations began to unwittingly distance themselves from their customers by employing automated technology to replace human communication. At first, customers seemed to appreciate it; as a majority of service businesses began to use automated communication technologies to replace the human factor, however, the results were pretty unsettling. Customers grew weary of, and yet at the same time, accustomed to the disconnected feeling.
Now these disappointed consumers and an entire generation of upcoming alarm customers ("generation text") are far less dependent upon interpersonal communication. They are comfortable using communication devices that are based on reducing or eliminating human interpersonal interaction. They also demand more interactivity from their technologies and want to do more for themselves than any other previous generation.
Here's the scary part—odds are they won't make good "traditional" alarm customers if the industry itself does not adapt to these new consumers with the unusual psychographic profile. Think about it! While many of your long-term customers may have problems programming their VCRs, they do not forget how to arm their security systems. They rely upon their trusted central station to handle any emergency.
On the contrary, new generation customers can operate home-based and personal communication technologies. The question is, will they be able to "program in" an interpersonal relationship with their alarm provider based on bringing emotional dependency into the mix? Maybe not but fortunately the jury is just being selected on this one and you can still influence the outcome in a positive manner.
A HYBRID CUSTOMER: MAKING THE MOLD
The future of the alarm industry will witness a "tug of war" between two opposing forces: namely, the increasing use of highly impersonal technologies versus the decreasing need for human interdependency. The alarm industry as ground zero, must find a level of commonality between these forces to emerge from this trend successfully.
The challenge to managing and controlling these opposing forces is to build a hybrid customer. The hybrid can appreciate the value of your services in ways that your deeply established customers do, while depending on you to feed their desires for new technologies and new uses for central station services. Augmenting the approach is a "peek behind the curtain" mentality, allowing them to take a more interactive role in the protection process which you alone formerly controlled. If you do, your opportunities will be enriched by a host of new security-related technologies, not destabilized by them.
However, if the central station industry does not take a leading role in this evolution, it's likely that some other communications industry will. Your central station-based customers will be taken along for the ride.
PASSING ON THE CENTRAL STATION GENE POOL
Central stations provide a service level (and can keep providing one) which is unsurpassed by any other communications-relative hub. The answer for their continued longevity may be in passing the "central station gene" on to the next generation of alarm company owners, managers and sales representatives.
The traditional approach was, and still is, on the quality of your overall service being centered squarely on the quality of the central station. With a dominant theme and passion in every sales presentation, you are able to translate the intangible (central station services) into a real-life mind's eye experience for your prospective customers. The day when 21st century alarm sales representatives spend 80% speaking about technology and a mere 20% on why central station services are so important may sound attractive but will do little in building a prospective customer's desire to use your service based solely on the role of your central station.
PAMELA J. PETROW is Executive Vice President, Vector Security, Inc.
author: By Pamela J. Petrow