What makes a company successful? The best will tout it is longevity driven by great products and superior service. Yet, behind any thriving enterprise are dedicated employees constantly responding to customer needs. Joy Sweet, senior manager, technical and customer services, is one of those employees at Aiphone.
She’s been with the company for more than 32 of Aiphone’s 50 years in North America. Joy’s seen many industry changes but said the company’s basic way of doing business has remained constant and dependable.
“Our motto is still ‘To provide quality products and services and to be a reliable business partner,’” she said. “Those aren’t just platitudes. We live by that philosophy. If we say a system will work for an application, it will work, and we will stand behind it. If we make a mistake, we’ll make it right for our customer. We’ve grown a lot but I’m proud we’ve never lost our identity.”
Joy is truly a jack of all trades overseeing customer service, technical support, production, and the repair departments. Her team members handle orders, returns, and repair processing. They answer questions on pricing, product availability, and order status. The technical support staff takes calls regarding system design, troubleshooting, programming, and more. She also has a team of senior technicians providing sales support, such as pre- and post-sales literature and how-to training videos.
Joy said the repair department typically requires the least amount of her time.
“Our product quality rate is second to none,” she said. “The quantity of items coming back for repair compared to what we sell is so ridiculously low it’s unbelievable. We have one repair technician for all of the U.S. and Canada, and she can typically service everything she receives within 2 days.”
There’s been a lot of industry change during Joy’s tenure at Aiphone. She remembers 1990s multi-tenant systems limited to three entrances and 40 tenants. Today’s Aiphone GT Series handles up to 480 doors and 5,000 tenants. Joy says an even bigger development is the ability to run intercoms, such as the IX Series 2, over a customer’s network. That’s made distance between door and master stations a non-factor.
“Now, we can have video door stations around the country with a central monitoring station in one city answer all calls and monitor all sites,” she said. “That was unthinkable just 10 years ago.”
When asked what sets Aiphone apart from its competition, Joy lists three key components:
- An unmatched product portfolio capable of meeting enterprise, multi-tenant, commercial, residential, or network-based video entry and communications needs with the highest quality platforms.
- Customer support with online tools such as QuikSpec which enables dealers to quickly design a complete system by answering a few questions about a job’s size, feature, and function requirements.
- The Aiphone team – from an experienced direct sales force to highly trained customer service and technical support teams. This, she said, is a huge asset.
“Aiphone employees are passionate about what they do,” she said. “There are many people who’ve been here five, 10 or 20+ years. They are making or have made a career with Aiphone. I’m especially proud of the people I’ve had the opportunity to hire.”
One lesson Joy learned in more than three decades on the job is that great products, service, and people can’t guarantee business success. The Aiphone success story would be impossible without a loyal base of integrators.
“Thanks for your continued support of Aiphone over the years,” she said to integrators before offering them a bit of advice. “If you’re still selling and installing the old-school analog systems, you should check out our new systems. Don’t be afraid of the IP-based products. Once you get the hang of programming, it’s a game changer and opens up sales opportunities you may be missing now.”
