Video triage

Video triage, defined: the service desk sees the fault on the customer's phone camera first, and only then decides whether anyone needs to travel

Video triage is the practice of looking at a reported fault on video, recorded or streamed from the customer's own phone, before deciding what happens next: fix it remotely, send a technician, send a specialist, or send the right part first. It is remote triage with video as the input in place of a description.

The terms around it overlap. Remote visual assistance usually means the live version, an expert on a video call guiding the person on site. Visual support is the wider category. Video triage names the decision the video serves, which is why planners and dispatchers use it: the question is never "can we see it" but "now that we have seen it, who goes".

How video triage works

A customer reports a fault by phone, email or ticket. The service desk sends a link by text or email. The customer opens it, the phone's camera starts in the browser, and the desk gets to see the unit, the display, the error code and whatever is leaking, tripping or making the noise.

From what is visible the desk makes one of four calls. The fault is a setting or a reset and is resolved there. It needs a visit, and the technician now knows the model, the fault and the access before leaving. It needs a different skill, so the job is routed to the right person the first time. Or it needs a part, which is ordered before the visit is booked. Each of those protects the first-time fix rate, and the first avoids a truck roll altogether.

Live video triage or a recording made from a link

Most tools sold for this are live calls, and a live call is the right tool when the expert has to react to what they see: "turn that valve, now show me the gauge". The cost is that two people must be free at the same moment, and a desk that handles forty faults a day cannot hold forty calls.

The alternative is to put the questions in front of the camera instead of behind it. The expert's decision tree becomes a set of steps the customer follows alone: show the rating plate, show the display, film the unit running for ten seconds, show the breaker, answer whether the fault is constant or intermittent, with the next step depending on the answer. The customer does it when they are standing at the unit, at seven in the morning or eleven at night, and the desk reviews a queue of finished cases. This is asynchronous capture applied to triage, and for routine faults it scales where calls do not.

Video triage example: a cold room alarm at a restaurant

A restaurant reports at six on a Saturday evening that the walk-in cold room is alarming. The refrigeration contractor's out of hours line texts a link. The sous chef films the controller, which shows a high temperature alarm and a defrost symbol, then the evaporator inside the room, which is a solid block of ice, then the door seal, which is torn along the hinge side.

The on-call engineer watches it at home. Nothing has failed electrically: warm air through the torn seal has iced the coil. He talks the chef through a manual defrost by phone, the room recovers within the hour, and a seal is ordered on Monday for a planned visit. One emergency callout on a Saturday night did not happen, and the visit that does happen carries the right part. How this plays out across a building portfolio is in video triage for facilities maintenance.

What video triage does not do, and the mistakes teams make

It does not diagnose what a camera cannot see. Refrigerant charge, insulation resistance, a bearing that only fails warm. Video narrows the possibilities and sometimes that is all it does, which is still worth having before a technician sets off.

It is not a licence to make the customer the engineer. Never ask a member of the public to remove a cover, reach behind a live panel or climb to get the shot. The steps should say so, and a fault that can only be shown by doing something unsafe goes straight to a visit.

The mistakes teams make: offering video only as a call, so it is used for a tenth of the faults it could cover; asking for "a quick video" with no steps and getting a blurred pan of a plant room; letting the video live in a chat thread that the technician never opens; and counting sessions instead of visits avoided and repeat visits prevented.

Where the video goes

Onto the job. The recording, the customer's answers and the desk's decision belong on the work order that dispatch assigns, so the technician opens one record on the way to site and sees what the desk saw.

Venta Capture, a product of VentaVid, is built for the second route: the customer is sent a link, follows the guided steps in the mobile browser with no app and no account, and the case arrives timestamped and located in a shared inbox where the desk reviews it and routes it, with no call to schedule. See Venta Capture for field service.