C4 Connect and Assist - new CIaaS offering

[RAV]

No hints of anything.
This is prominently structured as a terms/90days notice announcement.

However, April 23rd is two weeks after ISC West in Las Vegas, which they're showing at. And if I'm correct was where the formal launch of Core happened. 

[eggzlot]

I could be wrong, but OS 2 came out in '09 and OS 3 came out in '19.  10  years is a "long" time I guess but if they came out with OS4 it would be half the life cycle.  Seems fairly quick.

The UI change was the massive move from OS 2 to OS 3 (Flash to Android was already in the works prior to the full OS update), therefore, I don't see such a major revision coming.  We are only on 3.4.x or whatever and I think OS 2 went up to .10 or .11?  No clue what OS 1 went up to...

[South Africa C4 user]

I tend to agree, I can’t see OS4 being anytime soon…. Nor do I see a great need for OS4.  But I have been wrong before ( often).  

I can see a lot of things that could be improved on in OS3 though so I am all for OS3.5 sooner rather than later!

[chopedogg88]

personally, I don't care if you call it OS3, OS 3.5, OS4...what really matters is what functionality are you gaining

[R_Willis]

Did I read somewhere if you change your dealer of record at any point it will prompt a need to use/pay for the connect service?

 

 

[Andrew luecke]

5 hours ago, eggzlot said:

I could be wrong, but OS 2 came out in '09 and OS 3 came out in '19.  10  years is a "long" time I guess but if they came out with OS4 it would be half the life cycle.  Seems fairly quick.

The UI change was the massive move from OS 2 to OS 3 (Flash to Android was already in the works prior to the full OS update), therefore, I don't see such a major revision coming.  We are only on 3.4.x or whatever and I think OS 2 went up to .10 or .11?  No clue what OS 1 went up to...

Even from OS3.0, to OS3.4, the changes have been absolutely massive under the hood too. We're talking absolutely epic changes which people take for granted these days until they try an older driver. Features like:

1. Our drivers can add their own drivers now (so, AutoSetup in our Shelly driver as an example or almost all of our light drivers). In the past, you would have had to have added every driver manually. A Shelly job which these days takes 5mins to provision would have taken potentially an hour in the past or longer
2. Native ColorWheel
3. Custom Interfaces for drivers (which we use for Contact us and the Chowmain scheduler driver).
4. And a huge amount of stuff that we use in the backend for troubleshooting.
5. Bunch of Camera stuff, etc.

So things are still moving really quickly

[neil12011]

5 hours ago, R_Willis said:

Did I read somewhere if you change your dealer of record at any point it will prompt a need to use/pay for the connect service?

 

 

I haven't heard anything to this effect.

[fritzthomas]

        One thing I would have found to be beneficial is to allow the client to pay for the Assist service and allow the dealer to be the point person, not their call center. I usually don’t hit the Gold level for sales volume and I think an Assist plan that opens my tech support access to either the 7 day 8-8 or the 24/7 + 365 would be an easy sell. Most of my client base would refuse to contact another party to deal with their service issues.    
       I’ve made a reputation for direct and personal concierge level service and clients message me directly. The Snap stance is that Assist is strictly client facing so that becomes a deal stopper for me to promote it. I’m a very small operator that represents Snap and C4 very well on my own so I don’t see this program helping me at all, it would likely fracture many of my relationships. I think this would benefit larger firms where employees aren’t likely to want to deal with after hours calls so it’s not a bad idea but definitely not a one size fits all solution. For small operators that don’t necessarily want to run large operations but focus on higher quality and less volume this seems to run against that grain.

[msgreenf]

28 minutes ago, fritzthomas said:

        One thing I would have found to be beneficial is to allow the client to pay for the Assist service and allow the dealer to be the point person, not their call center. I usually don’t hit the Gold level for sales volume and I think an Assist plan that opens my tech support access to either the 7 day 8-8 or the 24/7 + 365 would be an easy sell. Most of my client base would refuse to contact another party to deal with their service issues.    
       I’ve made a reputation for direct and personal concierge level service and clients message me directly. The Snap stance is that Assist is strictly client facing so that becomes a deal stopper for me to promote it. I’m a very small operator that represents Snap and C4 very well on my own so I don’t see this program helping me at all, it would likely fracture many of my relationships. I think this would benefit larger firms where employees aren’t likely to want to deal with after hours calls so it’s not a bad idea but definitely not a one size fits all solution. For small operators that don’t necessarily want to run large operations but focus on higher quality and less volume this seems to run against that grain.

Idk. You like 10pm calls on a Saturday night? 

[BXTR]

18 minutes ago, msgreenf said:

Idk. You like 10pm calls on a Saturday night? 

That would kind of suck and we typically don’t get those but is there a certain demographic or system size where the client would call at an unreasonable hour?

The one time we did get that call….. the old “nothing works” on a Sunday night from our biggest client who’s only 10 minutes away. He was right, nothing worked. A water line above the rack leaked and water managed to get into the primary controller. So Assist wouldn’t have been able to do anything in that situation anyway

 

[fritzthomas]

It’s not that it’s enjoyable. I charge a premium and typically work with people that pay that premium for a personal contact that understands all of their systems and subsystems intimately. In a few cases this extends to multiple properties with singular clients. This is my differentiation from competitors that farm out support. A good number of my high net worth clients left their previous integration companies because they migrated support to One Vision and it ruined their service experience. It’s worked extremely well for my business although as I said, an employee in a larger company that wants to work a set number of hours and not want to deal with calls after hours can be solved with this service. If I felt that I was overextended and being neglectful of my clients then this would probably be a relief to sign people up. I‘m definitely not in this position and prefer to run things as is. I do see the benefit for others and if they can extend those support hours to me it definitely has a huge upside to my business.

[GregCAMS]

39 minutes ago, fritzthomas said:

It’s not that it’s enjoyable. I charge a premium and typically work with people that pay that premium for a personal contact that understands all of their systems and subsystems intimately. In a few cases this extends to multiple properties with singular clients. This is my differentiation from competitors that farm out support. A good number of my high net worth clients left their previous integration companies because they migrated support to One Vision and it ruined their service experience. It’s worked extremely well for my business although as I said, an employee in a larger company that wants to work a set number of hours and not want to deal with calls after hours can be solved with this service. If I felt that I was overextended and being neglectful of my clients then this would probably be a relief to sign people up. I‘m definitely not in this position and prefer to run things as is. I do see the benefit for others and if they can extend those support hours to me it definitely has a huge upside to my business.

very good points - I'd be in that demographic of what you're offering based upon the service level contract with my dealer and their pricing structure of what their RMR supports that goes well beyond what Assist/Assist Premium are offering.  And they are quick to respond.  Case in point this morning, I got booted out of my ovrC Connect and & LUMA Apps with no notice.  I used the local integrator's service and within 15 minutes got a call back from my local team that was already on the phone with Snap and found that the 'accidentally' deleted my ovrC app and had to reestablish the account.  

[South Africa C4 user]

6 hours ago, fritzthomas said:

It’s not that it’s enjoyable. I charge a premium and typically work with people that pay that premium for a personal contact that understands all of their systems and subsystems intimately. In a few cases this extends to multiple properties with singular clients. This is my differentiation from competitors that farm out support. A good number of my high net worth clients left their previous integration companies because they migrated support to One Vision and it ruined their service experience. It’s worked extremely well for my business although as I said, an employee in a larger company that wants to work a set number of hours and not want to deal with calls after hours can be solved with this service. If I felt that I was overextended and being neglectful of my clients then this would probably be a relief to sign people up. I‘m definitely not in this position and prefer to run things as is. I do see the benefit for others and if they can extend those support hours to me it definitely has a huge upside to my business.

I must say that as a (relatively) educated end user with 2 homes (both massive systems), I fully understand this viewpoint.  My dealer has taken a couple of emergency calls at 9pm on a Friday evening.  The reality is that in these sorts of emergencies, even my dealer has been able to do very little BUT due to the relationship, he has been able to calm me down and assure me that we would get it all sorted out.  I suspect that the telephonic support I would get from someone with no clue about my system would just irritate me in that sort of situation…

I should also say that my dealer has always been extremely gracious in these situations and his wife has (as far I can tell ) been very understanding when he has spent an hour on the phone to me…

That said, my dealer does not currently charge me for these sorts of calls but makes his money on my regular additions and changes to the systems. 

Edited January 26 by South Africa C4 user

[RAV]

Not every client is respectful.
Not every dealer is responsive.

Talking to my rep team a few months back, it was clear that it's a big issue for many, and for Control4, than most of us are aware of.
 

[msgreenf]

Again, this forum represents a small %. I regularly take over jobs from MIA dealers…there is a reason for that….

[Neo1738]

Reading the press release seems those of us on 4sight can keep it for our systems only affects new installs. I am happy about that. 

 The company says 4Sight will continue to be available to past subscribers, but clients receiving any installations going forward must sign up and subscribe to enable Connect.

[Hertz]

Just lost my first quote due to the subscription fee. Client told me he won’t use any system that requires a subscription. 
 

Some people don’t care, some would rather die than pay a subscription fee when there’s free alternatives. 

[msgreenf]

29 minutes ago, Hertz said:

Just lost my first quote due to the subscription fee. Client told me he won’t use any system that requires a subscription. 
 

Some people don’t care, some would rather die than pay a subscription fee when there’s free alternatives. 

Man, he just not run a business... no office365, no sales force, no g suite.... 

[RyanE]

35 minutes ago, msgreenf said:

Man, he just not run a business... no office365, no sales force, no g suite.... 

<must>

[Gary Leeds UK]

2 hours ago, Hertz said:

Just lost my first quote due to the subscription fee. Client told me he won’t use any system that requires a subscription. 
 

Some people don’t care, some would rather die than pay a subscription fee when there’s free alternatives. 

I do understand ~ we just started a subscription system in our business and it not working 

Sales are not very happy 

accounts keep saying it will work 

[eggzlot]

4 hours ago, Hertz said:

Just lost my first quote due to the subscription fee. Client told me he won’t use any system that requires a subscription. 
 

Some people don’t care, some would rather die than pay a subscription fee when there’s free alternatives. 

I honestly do not know - so I am asking, but the "alternatives" to C4 (to me) are Crestron, Savant, Elan, URC....do they have required fees?  I am not poking the bear, I am really just inquiring because I am curious.

Are there "free" dealer based solutions that as custom installer would sell?  To me the free things are more amazon/big box store offerings but I could be wrong

[Hertz]

1 hour ago, eggzlot said:

I honestly do not know - so I am asking, but the "alternatives" to C4 (to me) are Crestron, Savant, Elan, URC....do they have required fees?  I am not poking the bear, I am really just inquiring because I am curious.

Are there "free" dealer based solutions that as custom installer would sell?  To me the free things are more amazon/big box store offerings but I could be wrong

I believe only Savant has fees for certain things. 

[Shoe]

They could offer a lifetime service "license" rather than a subscription. Then change the license type they offer every several years. Perhaps customers will feel differently about one time fees vs recurring yearly cost. On the Snap side you could still account for it like a subscription. If the cost of the controller is less than 5% of the job I'd imagine it might not be noticed.

[zaphod]

Lifetime license fees are not a sustainable business model over the long run.  We have seen that with apps or other software.  Everything is moving to a subscription model, both because the economics work better for valuing the company, and it makes for a more sustainable business.  Especially if growth levels out and the company isn't acquiring a lot of new customers, but still has a large installed user base.

One would hope that with an annual license fee that C4 would be less incentivized to EOL their hardware.  In the past how would they make revenue from existing customers?  To do that they had to sell more hardware and one way was to make them drop $10k on new controllers every 5-10 years - not that I am saying that they did this on purpose.

Even think of Apple today, they are trying to purchase their service revenue because the market for phones isn't really growing, new phones are generally replacing existing phones.  So they are trying to grow services like music, video streaming, news, games, fitness, etc.

[eggzlot]

I doubt anyone from C4 that participates here would answer - but curious for the dealers what % of their customers pay for 4sight versus don't pay for 4sight?  If spending $10,000s > $100,000s on a custom integration of AV, Lights, HVAC, Security, etc I cannot see someone balking over $150 or $250/year?  The only use case I see is a 1 room home theater type - no real need to pay for 4sight because local control is sufficient and don't likely need the other features.

So forcing a $99/year solution I think may deter the Core Lite + Halo bundle being sold to get people "Started" on c4 with a home theater where a dealer hopes that installation could maybe lead to a bigger job.  Its already like $1k for that bundle, adding in $99/year I think will chase people away.