Residential customers know that having a home security system protects their property and gives extra peace of mind, but what keeps a residential customer from leaving their service provider? Livewire thinks it has found a way to retain its customers and keep them engaged with Alarm.com.

“We first became aware of Alarm.com in the early days of our alarm business, when most of the signals used to travel along old school copper, phone wire and plain old telephone service (POTs),” said Henry Clifford, president and CEO of Livewire, an Alarm.com service provider for integrated homes and businesses in Central Virginia. “Alarm.com at the time had a cellular backup solution. So if your phone line got caught, it would dial out. In those days, smartphones really weren’t mainstream.

“It really wasn’t an app, so it certainly wasn’t really much in the way of interactive services engagement,” Clifford said. “So that was our first brush with Alarm.com. Wave two began in earnest about 10 years ago when we decided to pivot a lot of our business away from the older calculator on the wall style keypads into newer style alarm panels. So their connectivity, which was attractive to us, was cellular. And at that point it was very reliable.”

Clifford continued, “We decided to make Alarm.com part of our standard security offering and then also went back and converted a bunch of our older alarm customers who were dial-up into Alarm.com subscribers. And what we found is that the old school mindset was that you sign them up and you don’t really want to interact with them because you're afraid if you interact with them, they’re going to cancel.”

Livewire saw its attrition rates fall and realized that attrition rates correlated directly with the use of the Alarm.com app and interactive services. The company saw its attrition rates initially drop from 12 percent to 3 percent in 2014 after end users began to embrace the interactive services of Alarm.com and get involved more in their video and data. Livewire’s attrition rates now hover around 6 percent.

“If the old mindset was that the key to low attrition is you ignore your customer, the new mindset around engagement was the key to engagement and retention is that the customer should — novel idea — want to use your app and be excited and feel good about it.”

From arming the system from anywhere, letting visitors in remotely, monitoring the kids coming home in HD video, adjusting the thermostat and opening the garage. The more end users logged into their system and the more time they spent in their account, the more engaged they were. Livewire realized once end users engaged with the app, they became huge fans of Alarm.com and in turn, more loyal to Livewire.

“We love Alarm.com and use the app especially since we travel quite a bit and with family members coming and going around the clock,” said Craig Shealy, a Livewire customer in Richmond, Va. “We love the peace of mind that comes from getting alerts when anything out of the ordinary occurs.”

Alarm.com’s platform also offers more than just video monitoring. “You take out the Alarm.com app and you can see what’s going on in the home,” Clifford said. “And then there’s the add-on capabilities where you can add heating and cooling, smart locks, cameras, etc. etc. that makes it really attractive. It’s easily expandable, and so that’s what really impresses me.”

Clifford said his favorite Alarm.com products include the Flex IO for keeping the lawn tools in the shed protected and contact sensors to monitor a beer fridge from those underage high school kids.

“As we see these sort of waves of new adoption coming around, whether it’s smart doorbells or video analytics with cameras or smart heating and cooling, we’re seeing Alarm.com really taking charge of that conversation,” Clifford added. “I see them very much as a data company. It’s really smart with how to make the best use or draw the most meaningful conclusions around things that are happening in the home and the business that translates into most of our clients interacting with it.”

Finally, remarking on the substantial fall in attrition rates, Clifford concluded, “The only time we’re going to see attrition today, they’re probably going to another Alarm.com dealer. So it’s not like they’re abandoning the platform; maybe they’ve moved residences, but they’re staying on the platform.”