SHM Issues, maybe proactive solution needed

After this mornings SHM failure I did re-assess my decision to use SHM. I do understand that some of the long term users have certainly been through a lot of this in the past.

One of the SHM deficiencies that is constantly brought up is that if you lose your internet you’re pretty much up the creek, and I think we all understand that.

However, this mornings issue was a software error, and I believe that since most of the functionality of Samsung/ST depends on a smartphone that they could have easily notified people of the issue…Email or text. I have already read where one user had a leak detector issue due to SHM being unavailable…a proactive notification of the failure could have prevented that (maybe?)…set your alert tone different for ST messages.

Monitored systems do offer a certain amount of pro active notifications, battery levels, and sometimes emails or even calls to the police with communication failures or perceived problems.

Again, I do understand the internet failure issues, but this wasn’t one, and since I’d guess 99% of us have “cell phones” there is no reason for Samsung/ST not to use that to their and/or our advantage with emergency or critical notifications…maybe it becomes an option, or you have to sign up for it, but it’s certainly a great means of communication. I don’t want to go overboard but I believe they know most all of our devices and apps and eventually the communications could be drilled down to the device or app level.

As I stated in another post, Samsung/ST needs to seriously understand that this is not a “toy”, it has been accepted as a part of many of our lives and routines.

Sometimes a proactive approach at the time a problem is recognized turns out way better than waiting to see how many customers notice it…recent example, just ask Wells Fargo!

I will stick with Samsung/ST as I think it’s the best option, and there have certainly been some very effective improvements recently.

My $.02

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The structure exists, the company just doesn’t use it.

There is a status page for SmartThings and you can subscribe to get email updates from it.

http://status.smartthings.com

But just as an example, yesterday they did a platform update which broke the ability to save new automations, even in the official SmartLighting feature.

The company was very aware of it, and they implemented a hot fix about eight hours later. But the status page was never updated, and if you look at it today it will say there were no issues yesterday. Which obviously doesn’t inspire consumer confidence about their notification system.

I don’t know why they don’t update the status page more often, the question has been asked many times.

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:arrow_up: This :heavy_multiplication_x: 1000

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One of the first things I did was to check the platform status looking for a confirmation that they were aware of the issue…last update showing November 17th, rollout.

Update and management of a process that’s already in place is not a “corporate” issue, it is simply a project management issue with the SmartThings “product”. There is no “high upper management” sign off required for that type of issue…after all, it didn’t explode. I do not believe that Samsung doesn’t approve of updating its customer base on a system status, particularly when there is already a process in place for doing it. With their Galaxy phone, and washing machine issues they are, and should be, more transparent than ever. What I do believe, again as an opinion, is that maybe in the old ST group, posting problems were not perceived as a positive sign when you are selling your company, and I’m hoping we’re past that now.

With my earlier post I was hoping to make someone aware, and get other community input, that there is an excellent venue to communicate with their customers, with both positive and somewhat negative news.

I absolutely agree that the first thing would be to at least use the process that’s in place, and I see that as a task/project management issue. My post was to suggest and hope that maybe they could go a step farther. Although I admit that I have no idea how much, if any, this forum is reviewed by management.

JD, I make it a point to follow and read all of your post so I know that you are very smart, and sometimes frustrated with their approach as well…maybe we can get someone to pay attention. Thank you very much for all you do to support us.

Again, simply my $.02

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