AFAM updates, videos, and competitor price Increases

This Week

​In this update, we’ll cover recent improvements to our services, share a few market updates, and highlight some changes resulting from the latest Apple and Android phone updates.

New Features

Over the summer, we made a number of enhancements and introduced several new features across our products and services. We’ll explore these in more detail over the coming newsletters, but here’s a quick preview of just a few of them:

• New AFAM AlarmTech App – Faster message delivery and new controls that let you customise which alerts and notifications you receive
• Floorplan & Detector Enhancements – Service agents can now access individual detector history, along with improved IoT message decoding for Ampac, Bensan, and Pertronic panels. We’ll cover this in more detail next time
• Property Portfolio Portal Updates – Improvements to mapping, test and state history displays, and floorplan views
• Subscribe Function – Now simpler to use on mobile, making it easier to subscribe to all site messages during surveys or inspections
• PFA State History & Test Exports – Streamlined export functionality for a more intuitive experience

Competitor Price Increases

​We understand that one of our competitors has recently advised customers of another price increase, the second in the past 18 months. In some cases, this latest increase is up to 10%.

If you or your customers have received a price increase notice, we’d be happy to provide a comparative quote. We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised, not just by the price, but by the level of service you could be receiving.

Transfer Pricing and Process

As a reminder, transferring a customer from one of our two competitors to us is a simple, painless process and something that we do multiple times a week, often daily. 

When we transfer a customer AFAM:

• Supplies all required monitoring equipment, at no cost to the customer
• Organises, and pays for the installation of the monitoring equipment, at no cost to the customer
• Coordinates directly with FENZ and the incumbent monitoring provider, at no cost to the customer
• Organises the incumbents monitoring hardware to be returned to them, at no cost to the customer

If you or your customers are considering a switch, get in touch and we’ll take care of the rest.

Short-Form Videos

We’ve just released the first in a new series of short form videos. The first video covers fire alarm monitoring and how it fits in and was filmed in a Wellington café during a recent customer visit. 

Watch it here: What does AFAM do? or by clicking on the image below.

We’ll be covering topics for both property owners/managers and fire alarm service agents and have already recorded a couple more. If there’s something you’d like us to cover, let us know, we’d love your input.

Recent Android & Apple Updates Blocking SMS Alerts

We’ve received reports that some customers and technicians are not receiving AFAM SMS alerts following recent Android and Apple updates.

These updates can cause messages containing links to be filtered or blocked:

• Android devices – Messages may be marked as spam and moved to the Spam & Blocked folder. In some cases, the sending number may also be blocked.
• Apple devices – Messages from unknown numbers may be filtered into the Unknown Senders list, meaning no notification is triggered.

The fix is simple: save our SMS node numbers in your phone contacts. This ensures messages are delivered normally.

You can add the numbers manually, or contact our support team and we’ll send you a contact card for easy setup.

Next Time

​In our next newsletter blog post, we’ll take a closer look at the new detector history features for service agents, walk through updates to the AFAM AlarmTech App, and share more general news and updates.