Virtual Doorman Continues To Bring Service to New Buildings Across the Country
This week our techs have taken off to Sacramento to put another Virtual Doorman building online in California! Our newest VDM building is at the L Street Lofts in the heart of Midtown, Sacramento. The building is eager to experience the amenities of its first remote doorman! There is a lot of planning and coordination that goes into bringing service to buildings outside of our home base in New York City. One of the very first steps to the process of bringing Virtual Doorman to a building is having our Installation Manager complete a site survey by physically visiting the building to make sure our service is a viable option for that location. This is a little harder to do when the building is not around the New York City area. Being that places like California are so far away from us, we have to complete a site survey virtually through pictures and video conferencing to see exactly what we are working with. Things we look for during a site survey are what kind of intercom, access control and CCTV systems a building may already have to see if/how we can integrate those current systems with our own. If a building doesn’t currently have any of these structures in place, we find the best approach to adding them based on the buildings construction. Once this is complete, and the building looks like a good match for our service, our team starts the process of planning installation by working with building management, owners, etc. It’s an extensive process of trip planning, ordering equipment and getting it to the site prior to our techs arriving (or our techs hauling it with them on their trip), ensuring the building has the proper phone and internet lines, and many other important steps to bring the Virtual Doorman service online. Our techs will be in Sacramento for a little less than a week, also stopping in at some of our other buildings in both Sacramento and San Francisco to make some service calls to our customers there. No matter how far away a building is from our home base, we always make sure everything is running smoothly for them, and that we are there to service them if/when needed. In each new city that we put online, we actually train and certify a new dealer in that area so that our client is supported and doesn’t have to wait for one of our homebased techs to fly out. This also makes things easier for future installations. By the end of this week, L Street Lofts will officially be the sixth building to go online with our Virtual Doorman service in the state of California! We look forward to making them a part of our rapidly growing amenity!
Real Doormen vs. Remote Doormen
A doorman is typically defined as a person who is employed to attend the doors at a residential building to welcome residents and their guests, oversee deliveries and provide security for the building. Today the average cost of employing a traditional doorman around the clock is $375,000 a year. While the need for a doorman at many buildings is essential, the cost of employing a traditional doorman is not something that many buildings can justify these days. As building budgets get tighter and the need for security and added amenities increases, remote doorman services are gaining popularity as a cost effective alternative to a physical doorman. Remote doormen are a true alternative to an on-site doorman or concierge and provide the same services as a traditional doorman, but at a fraction of the cost!