Alertis: a customer portal without accounts

After reaching operational excellence, Alertis, a fire/security installer, started looking for solutions to improve their customer service. Maintaining a positive relationship with their customers is a key for Alertis as people often associate alarm systems going off with a flawed CX. We’ve spent some time talking to Jasper Snoeck, Customer Innovation Manager at Alertis, about their experience of working with Twintag and the results this partnership brought.

I would like to begin by asking how you first found out about Twintag and what made you choose our company to provide you with necessary digital solutions?

Jasper: I think we have to go back to 2020 when we started looking into different companies and solutions that would help us to set up our customer portal. We quickly realized how important it is for us but also how big of a deal an implementation could be.

After some time of doing extensive market research, we found you. We saw that Twintag already had an experience of developing a solution for another certification company and heard that they were very happy with the result.

The fact that we could get a ready prototype in a very short period of time and for a very reasonable price was a big bonus as well.

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And why did you decide to make a step towards digitization of your existing services?

Jasper: Well, it's a part of our DNA at Alertis. We are constantly trying to incorporate new solutions, models of doing business, tools, etc. I’d say we could name ourselves more or less early adapters on the front of tech and innovation.

In this case, we knew how important customer experience is and how crucial it is to connect with your customers, especially when you provide very technical services. For example, fire detectors, that is not something very exciting that attracts much attention or media coverage. As a result, people are not interested in these items on their own regardless of their importance. At the same time, with items like fire detectors you don’t want to have any weak spots in their performance, i.e. false alarms. That is why ensuring that our customers can get the highest-quality products that would be paired with top-notch support service is of priority for us.

While between 2015 and 2020 we were really focusing on our operational excellence, now we are working on our Customer Intimacy.

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Can you please describe the work process with Twintag? Do you have any comments on how communication was structured, how the planning phase was presented etc?

Jasper: Our experience with Twintag was great. Working with software can get difficult when you are a very hardware-oriented company but we were lucky because Twintag took control of the whole process.

All weekly calls were planned out and scheduled in advance, so it was easy for us to make sure that we are staying on the same page and there are no delays on feedback.

Also the fact that our MVP (Minimal Viable Product) was ready in a very short period of time was impressive considering how long and painful developing a service like this from scratch can be. We started working with Twintag in May and by the end of January we could already start putting Twintag-powered QR codes on our installations.

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That is nice to hear! Could please share some specific results you saw after implementation of a solution?

Jasper: We can see that for our customers the maintenance process became more transparent and simple. Now they can scan a QR code on their fire panel and clearly see if they have a maintenance contract. Before, it was often the case that our customers did not know about the existence of their maintenance contract and, therefore, were not signing it timely either.

Just a year ago we were still printing installation and usage manuals for each fire panel. But after two days of having twintags these piles of paper were gone. Also, our support team does not get as many calls with questions that now can be answered by scanning the QR code. Instead, they can focus on seriously important questions that need human supervision.

I should also mention that our technicians were extremely excited and engaged in this project because they could see a lot of add-ons in the future. We are already thinking about other potential uses of twintags because it truly made our lives easier. All in all, seeing this positive reaction towards a new tool was yet another proof that working with Twintag was a great decision.

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Thank you for this insightful conversation, Jasper! We are looking forward to brainstorming new applications of Twintag at Alertis together.