Plume talks the path to victory in the smart home market

The smart home market is exploding, with a host of new devices hitting the market every week. With these devices and services heavily reliant on the connectivity provided by service providers operators, this booming market should also be one of enormous opportunity. 

 

However, the future of the smart home lies in the cloud, a technical space in which big tech is already deeply intertwined, leaving the service provider industry in a race to catch up. As Plume Design’s Chief Commercial Officer, Tyson Marian explained, it is here where big tech like Google and Amazon present the biggest threat – and not directly because of their connected devices on the market. 

 

“The smart home will be won digitally,” Marian explained. “Not with physical devices like the Nest Thermostat or the Sonos Speaker. It’s going to be about the data and what you can ultimately leverage from that. Are the service providers at risk of losing in this environment? Absolutely, one-hundred percent.”

 

Part of the problem here rests on service providers taking their privileged position for granted when it comes to customer data collection.

 

“The service provider is in the best spot to lead the smart home market, because they’re capturing the most data inside the home. All of the big tech that we’ve talked about – they’re jealous of the service providers access to data, which is why they’ve tried to get in their space,” he explained.

 

“They have to start taking advantage of what really is an unfair advantage in the smart home market… It’s going to have to be a shift in mindset as to what needs to be done to leverage their data and how willing the service provider is to opening up and bringing in new partners.”

 

For Marian, this shift in mindset even goes so far as to change the connectivity service providers marketing approach, moving away from a focus on speed, instead focussing on customer experience.

 

“In this industry we’ve seen the internet service really be built around this story of speed. That’s just not going to work long-term,” he explained, advocating instead a smart home experience approach that guarantees quality of service. 

 

When consumers are happy with their quality of service, not only are they willing to be charged more for their connectivity – about 40% more per 100 megabits delivered when digital smart home services are included, according to Marian – but they are also less likely to look for an alternative service provider. In the 20 million homes around the world where Plume’s Smart Home Services and Communication Service Provider (CSP) applications have been adopted, churn has been reduced by 30%. Coupled with the reduced cost of installation of Plume’s solutions and the roughly 50% less calls from consumers to their operators related to their WiFi and internet connection, the cost savings begin to add up. 

 

“Unless you have these services and this path to market – and then, on the other side, the tools necessary to really give personalised, bespoke customer care – you’re not going to win in this market,” said Marian.