Security camera systems are undeniably important to help protect your business from theft and vandalism, as well as to provide video to police if anything occurs at your business. However, a quality PC-Based DVR Security Camera system can be used for many more purposes when configured properly. Security cameras are generating content 24 hours a day, which can easily be used to help your business stand apart from the rest of your competitors. Benefits are not limited to specific businesses, but can be adapted to virtually any business, to help customers remember you, talk about you, and refer others to you as well.
First, it is important to ensure that you have a camera system that can support easy remote viewing by your customers. We always recommend PC-Based DVR Card/Software packages for this application, because they offer the best remote viewing options, and can generally support hundreds of simultaneous logins. The system that we have used for most of our forward thinking business customers is the Alnet Systems PC-Based DVR Cards, which install into a standard Windows XP or Windows Vista PC, and allow for remote viewing from hundreds of simultaneous users. This system allows you to permit access to specific cameras only, so that you can specify certain cameras only to be viewable by customers. If you currently have a more limited VCR Based or Standalone DVR Security Camera system, you can easily remove the DVR or VCR and install a PC with a DVR Card. The cameras will plug directly into the DVR Card, instead of the standalone DVR or VCR, allowing for a simple upgrade to your existing camera system. The PC-Based DVR systems are easily upgradeable by installing additional cards into the PC, allowing you to keep your existing cameras for security, and adding additional cameras for content.
Once you know that your system is capable of broadcasting video to your customers, it is time to look at some of the hidden benefits of your business security camera system. The type of business is important to consider when you are looking at using your cameras to the benefit of your business. Think of something that can help make an impact to your customers with video content. For example, our shipping facility uses our camera systems to take snapshots and video of packages as they are being shipped. When our packages are shipped out, customers receive an email with a JPG image of their package as it is being checked before it is boxed. That way, customers can see their items, and it provides a great personal touch, as well as helps catch any errors before the customer even receives their package.
Other uses include auto repair facilities, with cameras showing the bays of their facility as well as the parking lot. These cameras can be embedded into a web page, so customers can simply view the cameras live by viewing their website. This allows customers to view their vehicle while it is in the parking lot, or in the shop being worked on by the technicians. The Auto Repair market in general has suffered in the past 20 years from trust issues with the public, stemming from some facilities that break the public trust. Customers can see the trustworthiness of your business, when they can view their car at any time; it lets them see that there is nothing to hide. Several auto shops that have installed these systems not only saw a greater amount of traffic to their websites, but also improved the return rate of their customers and saw a boost in customer referrals. Storage facilities have used cameras, to install into specific high-rate storage units, and provided customers with a login through their website. By being able to view their storage facility with an Infrared Night vision camera at any time through their website, their customers were more confident in the security of the facility.
Restaurants and Bars, especially in popular destination locations, have used publicly accessible video surveillance cameras on their website for years, to allow their customers to call their friends and family and see them on the web. These web cameras can easily be tied into a PC-Based DVR Surveillance camera system to provide features to countless customers and help increase traffic to the restaurant or bar by patrons.
Pet kennels are also a business that deals with the public trust. Clients have to trust the facility to provide adequate food, water and love to their pets while they are out of town or on vacation. By placing strategic cameras in the kennel areas, as well as in the areas around the building, and providing logins to their customers, these dog kennels can provide their customers with the ability to watch their dogs over the internet, from their PDA Phone, Windows Smartphone or Laptop from anywhere in the world. Now customers not only have a greater peace of mind about leaving their pet, but they trust the facility more, and are more likely to not only use the service again, but also refer additional clients.
Every day, millions of people leave their children with daycare facilities, despite the fact that nightmares about how children have been mistreated at some facilities still spatter across the news. This makes it very difficult for parents to choose the facility that they can trust with their children. It is easy to show parents that your daycare center can be trusted, and provide value-added service to the parents at the same time by installing a remote viewable CCTV security camera system. Not only will this show the parents that you are serious about the security of your facility, but you can also set up a user account for the parents, so that they can connect in and view their children over the internet using a web browser, or even with their PDA Phone or Windows Mobile Smartphone. This makes the choice of where to entrust their children an easy decision.
The above examples are in no way the only extended application of security cameras for improving your business model. They are just meant to show some of the limitless possibilities of a quality DVR surveillance camera system. Once cameras are in place, it is time to simply ask yourself, how you can use the content to improve upon your business model, improve customer trust and loyalty, and improve sales at your facility. It is time to stop looking at security camera systems as just security devices, and to start considering them as genuine business assets that can be used to improve your overall business model.
