Amazon knows the "smart home" isn't always user-friendly and is expanding an internal program that will actually send someone to your home to get you started. The program has actually already been running in a few U.S. cities, but Amazon is reportedly poised to dramatically expand it as it sees very high return rates for smart home tech.
Not unlike the famous house calls made by Best Buy's "Geek Squad" technicians, for a fee Amazon will send a vetted expert in the tech you're trying to install and walk you through the process. The emphasis is of course centered around making sure people get their Amazon Echo properly installed but expands to other areas of the smart home where Amazon also sells a whole lot of products.
Amazon understands that bypassing the initial frustration of configuring an Echo (or three) to work with your other smart home components is critical to long-term customer satisfaction. The in-home service is already available in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Jose and Orange County — but expectations are the service would expand beyond the West Coast, as Amazon is currently hiring for "field technicians" in a variety of cities.
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