Net Promoter Score

Q1 2018 Smart Home Provider Scorecard: Consumers love Xfinity more than Vivint after a brief affair with ADT

I was reviewing the NPS scores for the big three Smart Home Providers, ADT, Vivint and Xfinity for Q1 2018. You might recall that ADT had some issues with a system upgrade in June of 2017 that caused a flood of frustrated users taking to the airwaves, dropping ADT’s already low NPS into the bowels of consumer hell. Checking around the holidays saw ADT start to recover, the the point of being on par with Xfinity and Vivint.

ADT recovers from their summer of misery over the holidays, only to slide down into negative NPS territory.

Notice that ADT’s NPS peaked in mid December, almost to an NPS of 25%. They actually were rated higher than Xfinity for the middle two weeks of December! Since then, ADT has fallen back into negative territory, frustrating users even as they lose them to other monitoring services or DIY solutions.

Comparing major Smart Home provides Q1 2018 NPS to Q4 2017. Xfinity shows a drop in interest but happier customers than Vivint.

While all providers saw a drop in interest after a surge in engagement over the holidays, Xfinity saw the smallest drop in interest. Vivint customers are still more vocal about their experience but Vivint’s NPS score dropped to 36% based on app reviews while Xfinity pulled ahead to an NPS of 40%. Both Vivint and Xfinity continue to threaten ADT’s prior dominance in the space even as Google, Amazon and Apple work to design DIY systems that dampen the demand of “Do It For Me” installations.

We’ve got the data, updated continuously, on the entire Smart Home market. With literally hundreds of thousands of consumer perceptions coming in every quarter, Argus Insights sees the successes and failures across the Smart Home landscape and has the tools to help you profit from the lessons others have paid for with sweat, tears and market share. Let me know if there is a question you’d like an answer too.

ADT Just Blew Up Their App UX and Customers Are More Than A Little Annoyed

ADT’s Pulse App has never been one of the most loved Smart Home management apps on the market. While ADT has struggled to make the app customers use to control their monitoring service better with new releases over the past few years, they have failed at every turn. Their most recent attempt was on 15 Jun 2017. In the last 6 days, ADT has received more reviews for the Pulse app than in the past year, over 2000 reviews, almost all negative.

As you can see, not only is ADT trailing behind the dominance of Vivint and Xfinity Home, but in the hearts and minds of their customers, the experience with the Pulse app went from bad to worse. What changed? What about the new version is driving ADT customers in droves to vent their frustrations at the App Store?

Attribute Funnel for ADT Pulse App showing where the new version is frustrating consumers. — Attribute Funnel for ADT Pulse App showing where the new version is frustrating consumers, overwhelmingly negative commentary.

In the funnel diagram above, the red shows what percentage of the over 2000 reviews mention specific topics negatively, the tiny sliver of green is the positive mentions and the gray indicates the span of neutral topics within the reviews. Overall, consumers heap vitriol on the stability of the updates, highlighted a number of bugs. Most pointed were the complaints on the loss of login using TouchId on the iOS version of the Pulse App. Consumers also flamed ADT on connectivity issues as the system switched between LTE and WiFi networks, frustrations with frequent updates requiring repeated logins to reauthorize or rearm their ADT systems. In short, a disaster. ADT has a lot they can learn from their competitors on how to deliver a quality user experience to their customers. Given the growth in DIY and the more delightful alternatives in managed services, ADT could be in trouble in the coming months even as overall Smart Home growth is increasing.

Do you delight or disappoint your customers? Do you want to know where your competition is vulnerable to disruption? You can watch the entire Smart Home market unfold using the Argus Analyzer, our Real-Time IoT Ecosystem Intelligence tool!

Seeing Is Believing: Q1 2017 Consumer Perceptions of Smart Home Cameras

With the close of the first quarter of 2017, we can start culling through all of the consumer reactions to Smart Home devices they have purchased in the last three months. One market segment that is always of interest is Security Cameras. The Nest Cam and Arlo are flagship products in this category that still contains a dizzying array of brands and packages, ranging from ten camera bundles sold at Costco to individual cameras flying off the shelves at Best Buy and Walmart. The question is, post purchase, which brands are delighting consumers by delivering on the promised experience?

Top Ten Most Mentioned Smart Home Camera Firms In Q1 2017

As you can see from the graph above, Nest and Netgear dominate the category. While we see demand for Nest Cam lower than the full portfolio of Netgear branded cameras, overall, Nest customers are happier with their user experience. You can see the cloud of other brands clustered in the area of lower demand and more frustrated users. Within this crowd, we see Logitech and Samsung making gains both in demand (Buzz is a proxy for demand) and Net Promoter Score. So what is the difference between Nest and Netgear for consumers? Some would argue that since Netgear makes most of the WiFi routers used to connect to these cameras, Netgear Cameras should be some of the easiest to set up, given that the initial connection to the WiFi router is a constant frustration for DIY consumers.

Comparison of consumer perceptions of Installation and Setup for Nest and Netgear Smart Home Security Cameras.

You can see from the Experience Funnels above (Red bars show what percentage of the reviews were negative, green indicates the percentage that were positive and grey is neutral) that Nest consumers mention the router set up more than software or any initial wiring. Overall the Nest Cam installation is a net positive experience. The same is true for Netgear. Since Netgear produces a range of cameras that compete both with the high end Nest Cam and lower end multi-camera bundles of Swann and others, you see Netgear consumers discussing Wiring and Software ahead of Initial Router Connection. While Netgear attracts more negative comments for their overall Installation experience, they receive a proportional increase in positive comments as well. In fact the Net Sentiment of Installation for Nest and Netgear is the same, about 13%, meaning that consumers for both brands found the overall experience of Installation to be positive, a key factor in driving Smart Home adoption.

Interestingly, Netgear’s prowess in WiFi did not translate into a significant differentiator for Smart Home Camera Installation compared to the other market leader, Nest. In a future post, we might dig deeper and do a direct comparison between Nest Cam and Netgear’s Arlo for a product level analysis.

If you can’t wait for the next post, check out our analytics platform, the Argus Analzyer, where you can dig deep into the bones of the user experience across the entire Smart Home market. You can also sign up for our free Smart Home market trend tracker, which includes basic access to the Analyzer and email updates whenever something causes the Smart Home market conversation in social media to jump.

Ring a ding ding: Ring Continues to Dominate A Slowing Doorbell Camera Market

The numbers are in. Ring continues to dominate the DIY Smart Doorbell Camera market with respect to consumer acceptance. Fully shedding the grumpy Doorbot customers, consumers rewarded Ring with a Net Promoter Score of over 40%, while their nearest competitors all have negative NPS numbers, meaning that detractors outnumber promoters for Skybell, August, ZModo and Aeon Labs.

One concerning trend is that it seems that consumer interest in Doorbell Cameras seems to be dropping. All brands not Ring have significantly slid in NPS, indicating that consumers are frustrated by their experience with their new devices. Earlier in the year, we thought that 2016 would be the year of Doorbell Cameras but it seems that demand is eroding in the second half of the year. It is also likely that Doorbell Cameras provided by service providers like Vivint are also seeing increased demand, buoyed by Ring’s massive spend on advertising.

If you’d like to dig deeper, check out our new Argus Analyzer product, where insights like this are at your fingertips, with the the first platform for Product Managers to gain direct access consumer inputs so critical to the success of their products and services. Priced so even Startups can afford it, there is no excuse for Product Managers to be surprised by their competition or their consumers again.

Sales Match Delight as Xiaomi & Huawei Threaten Samsung & Apple

On December 5^th, Argus Insights published a blog detailing the Rise of the Chinese Smartphone Manufacturers, which examined the improvement in Huawei, Lenovo, and Xiaomi’s consumer buzz and delight, compared to Samsung’s falling approval, from May to November of 2014. On December 15^th, Gartner published their Q3 numbers, declaring that “Samsung Lost Market Share While Top Three Chinese Manufacturers Combined Smartphone Market Share Grew by Four Percentage Points”[1]. Examining the change in consumer reaction from Q2 to Q3 shows that consumers are finding delight in the smartphones they are increasingly purchasing from Huawei and Xiaomi, a promising trend that will likely lead to increased adoption.

Xiaomi saw an increase in delight, but a decrease in buzz volume, which can be partly attributed to the fact that China Unicom is the only Chinese carrier included in this data set. Nonetheless, the consumers that are reviewing Xiaomi smartphones are delighted. Huawei saw an even more dramatic increase in delight, driven largely by Amazon and China Unicom customers, which we detail in our November Consumer Demand Report. Apple and Samsung remain ahead in terms of review volume, but both these popular brands saw lower Net Promoter Scores than the rising Chinese manufacturers.

Consumers are turning to lower priced smartphones as brand becomes less important. This trend is catapulting other manufacturers into a market long dominated by Apple and Samsung. Argus Insights will continue to track changes in consumer preference but if you are interested in custom reports, access to our tools and data, or personal consultation, please contact us. For weekly updates on the Smartphone, Wearable, and Home Automation markets sign up for free newsletter.

[1] http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2944819

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