Changing the Alarm Industry, One Home at a Time

A friend gave me a stack of CD’s for my birthday last year: they were playlists she had created, and since her musical tastes and mine did not exactly jibe, it took me a while to get through them. But one thing I really did like was that she threw in the occasional poem read aloud: some of those verses really resonate for me. The Road Not Taken One of these poems is Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” first published in 1916. It is one of the best known (and best loved) works by an American poet, and has stood the test of nearly a century. As I listened to the poem yesterday, with a fresh perspective after a week spent hiking and climbing in the Cascade Range of Washington State, I was reminded of FrontPoint. What’s Robert Frost Got to Do with Home Security? It’s not Mr. Frost himself that made me think of our very innovative alarm company, but the closing lines of this particular poem:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference

And for me, “the one less traveled by” is in fact the business model developed by the three founders of FrontPoint back in 2007. We set out to create a company that provided a residential security solution that was safer, smarter, simpler, more affordable, and virtually impossible to defeat. But equally important was the goal of establishing a nationwide reputation for world-class service that would be unmatched among the roughly 13,000 alarm companies in the US. By the way, here’s the full text of the Frost poem – and here’s a reading by Frost himself! The FrontPoint Difference In other words, it wouldn’t be enough to harness the latest technology by combining the best wireless home security equipment with the most advanced interactive alarm, video, and home automation services: we needed to set a new standard for transparency, integrity, and world-class support that would literally amaze people who have become jaded by the lackluster status quo of performance in our industry. The good news for us is that it has not been hard to achieve our goal, because the bar really was quite low – especially when you compare FrontPoint with some of the “big name” companies who are our competitors. The World’s Most Trusted Alarm Company In fact, we have every intention of earning and holding the title of the World’s Most Trusted Alarm Company. Just looking at the FrontPoint reviews you can find online, you might think we are already there: no nationwide provider can touch us for the number of glowing reports and high level of customer satisfaction. And that brings us back to Mr. Frost, because by choosing to put quality ahead of profit, and doing business the right way, we have indeed taken “the road less traveled” in the home alarm business. Core Values Values matter, too. I've written before on FrontPoint’s Core Values:

• Build Trust
• Dream Big
• Be Awesome

These are the guiding principles that inform our every action, and that we apply with rigorous consistency and discipline in our dealings with each other, and with our growing universe of very happy subscribers. In fact, we know that a significant portion of our success can be tracked to building FrontPoint’s culture on these values. When I am asked why other alarm companies (most of which have been around much longer than FrontPoint) have not embraced the wisdom of putting the customer first, I don’t have a good answer. But I do know that the approach FrontPoint has taken is indeed “the road less traveled” in this industry, and that for us - and for our customers - it has made all the difference.