Most AV maintenance contracts get bought once, filed away, and never actually read again until something breaks — which is exactly the wrong time to discover what tier you're on. Creation Care is Creation Networks' managed AV maintenance and support program, and it's built around a single premise: a meeting-room outage should never be a surprise, and when a system does fail, the response should already be defined in writing rather than negotiated over the phone while a room sits dark.
This article is the reference page for how Creation Care actually works — the three coverage tiers, what a preventive maintenance visit covers, how response times and loaner equipment differ by plan, and how it fits alongside Clarity Remote Monitoring, the 24/7 monitoring layer that sits on top of it.
Quick answer: Creation Care is a three-tier managed maintenance program — Silver, Gold, and Platinum — sold on 12- or 36-month terms (36 months gets preferred pricing). Every tier includes nationwide coverage, phone support, and a client service portal with a 60-minute digital acknowledgment on every ticket. What changes by tier is speed and depth: Silver runs next-business-hours support with a 4-hour service request response, 48-hour on-site dispatch, and one preventive visit a year; Platinum runs 24/7 with a 30-minute response, 4-hour on-site dispatch, quarterly preventive visits, and a guaranteed dedicated spare unit. It's vendor-agnostic — Creation Networks maintains systems it didn't originally sell or install just as readily as its own work.
See full plan details on the Creation Care Maintenance & Support page, or browse Maintenance Plans & Extended Warranties.
Why AV Maintenance Is a Different Problem Than IT Maintenance
Most facilities and IT teams already run a maintenance program for servers, network switches, and desktops. AV equipment gets folded into that same model by default, and it's usually the wrong fit. A conference room system fails in ways a server rack doesn't: a projector's color balance drifts for months before anyone notices, a DSP's microphone gain slips as a connector corrodes, a control system's firmware falls two versions behind and stops passing a platform certification it used to hold. None of these show up as a red light on a rack — they show up as a stalled meeting, and the first person to notice is whoever is standing at the podium.
That's the gap Creation Care is built to close: a maintenance model designed around meeting-room uptime specifically, not around general IT asset management. Customers without a maintenance contract typically pay two to three times more per incident on emergency repair calls than the equivalent monthly maintenance cost, and they see meaningfully more downtime while a fix gets arranged from scratch — vendor identified, technician scheduled, parts sourced, purchase order approved. A maintenance plan converts that unpredictable expense into a fixed, budgetable line item, and it protects equipment life at the same time: professional displays, projectors, and DSPs on a quarterly maintenance schedule routinely reach 7 to 10 years of reliable service, against roughly 4 to 5 years for unmaintained equivalents.
The Three Creation Care Tiers
Every Creation Care plan includes nationwide coverage, phone support, and a client service portal, with every ticket getting a digital acknowledgment within 60 minutes regardless of tier. What separates Silver, Gold, and Platinum is response speed, preventive maintenance frequency, and how failed equipment gets replaced.
| Feature | Silver | Gold | Platinum |
|---|---|---|---|
| Helpdesk hours | Phone, Mon–Fri 8AM–5:30PM PT | 24/7 remote support | 24/7 + direct NOC line, bypasses queue |
| Service request response | 4 hours | 2 hours | 30 minutes |
| On-site response | 48 hours | 24 hours | 4 hours |
| Time to repair | 7 days | 5 days | 2 days |
| Preventive maintenance | 1 visit/year | 2 visits/year | 4 visits/year |
| Loaner / spare equipment | Not included | Loaner, subject to availability | Guaranteed dedicated spare stock |
| Firmware & software updates | Not included | Updates on request | Proactive, managed, monthly status reports |
| Owner-furnished equipment | Not covered | Covered | Covered |
A common deployment pattern for multi-site customers is mixing tiers by room criticality within one master agreement: headquarters and high-traffic boardrooms on Platinum, regional offices on Gold, satellite or low-volume rooms on Silver — all rolling up into a single invoice and a single point of accountability rather than a separate contract per location.
What a Preventive Maintenance Visit Actually Covers
A standard visit isn't a walkthrough — it's a defined checklist: a full system health check across displays, projectors, audio DSPs, microphones, and control processors; firmware and software verification against the latest manufacturer-stable releases; physical cleaning of fans, filters, and projector lenses; calibration of audio levels, camera presets, and display alignment; cable and connector inspection and labeling; control-system diagnostic log review; and a written site report flagging any component approaching end of life or showing early failure indicators. Platinum visits add user-experience testing of one-touch-join behavior across Zoom, Teams, Webex, and Google Meet — confirming the button people press every day still does what it's supposed to, not just that the hardware powers on.
The distinction worth holding onto: AV repair is reactive, dispatched after something has already failed. AV maintenance is proactive — scheduled visits and firmware management designed to prevent the failure from happening at all. The EOL flagging in that written report is what turns a capital refresh into a planned line item instead of an emergency purchase order.
Vendor-Agnostic Coverage and Certifications
Creation Care doesn't require that Creation Networks originally sold or installed the equipment. Onboarding for a third-party system starts with a documentation audit: every endpoint gets inventoried, existing configurations captured, firmware levels identified, and anything already past end of life flagged before the system is added to the program with the same SLA protections as work Creation Networks built itself. A meaningful share of the largest managed accounts started this way.
Technicians hold AVIXA CTS, CTS-D, and CTS-I credentials alongside Crestron Certified Programmer/Installer, QSC Q-SYS Certified Design and Installation Partner, Microsoft Teams Rooms Certified Partner, and Zoom Rooms Certified Installer status, plus authorized service partner standing with Logitech, Poly, Shure, Biamp, and Samsung. In practice that spans the whole pro-AV stack: Crestron, Extron, AMX, Q-SYS, Biamp, ClearOne, and Symetrix on the control and DSP side; Shure, Sennheiser, QSC, Yamaha, Audio-Technica, and Bose on audio; Poly, Cisco, Logitech, Yealink, Neat, and Crestron Flex for video conferencing; and Samsung, LG, Sony, Sharp/NEC, Barco, Christie, and Epson on displays. If you're on a network switch under a manufacturer's own coverage — see our breakdown of NETGEAR's Sprint, Overdrive, and Custom Fastlane switch support tiers — that hardware-level warranty runs alongside Creation Care rather than in place of it.
Creation Care and Clarity Remote Monitoring: How the Two Programs Fit Together
Creation Care and Clarity Remote Monitoring solve different halves of the same problem, and most accounts run both together rather than choosing one. Creation Care is the hardware-first program: structured preventive visits, on-site dispatch, warranty and spare-parts management. Clarity is the always-on layer sitting above it — continuous telemetry across control processors, DSPs, codecs, microphones, cameras, and displays, with an in-house NOC that catches drift (a dimming projector lamp, a microphone showing early packet loss) days or weeks before it becomes a failed service call.
The practical difference: Creation Care gets a technician to a failed device within the SLA window your tier defines. Clarity is what often prevents that dispatch from being necessary in the first place, since roughly 80% of the incidents it flags get resolved remotely before a room's next scheduled use. A Platinum Creation Care plan paired with Clarity monitoring is the combination most business-critical environments — trading floors, courtrooms, 24/7 command centers — end up on.
What Correctly Matched Coverage Delivers
The measurable outcome of getting the tier right is fewer surprises on both sides of the relationship. A facilities team on the right tier knows exactly what a Tuesday-morning outage costs them in response time before it happens, because it's written into the contract rather than negotiated after the fact. Budget planning gets easier too: fixed monthly cost, quarterly SLA reporting, and an EOL-flagged asset list mean a capital refresh shows up as a planned line item a year out, not an emergency purchase order the week a display finally dies.
Getting the tier wrong shows up in specific, avoidable ways. A guest-facing lobby or after-hours event space on Silver with no after-hours dispatch generates the exact incident Creation Care is supposed to prevent, just later than it should have. A trading floor or courtroom on Gold without a guaranteed spare is gambling on availability during the one week a spare actually matters. Matching tier to room criticality — not to the cheapest line item on the quote — is what makes the rest of the program work as intended.
Choosing a Creation Care Tier
- Map every room to a criticality tier before pricing anything: which rooms cannot go down during business hours, which can wait a day, which can wait a week.
- Match after-hours and weekend coverage needs explicitly — a room used evenings or weekends on a Silver, business-hours-only plan is under-covered by design.
- Decide whether guaranteed spare stock matters for your highest-criticality rooms; if downtime cost exceeds the Gold-to-Platinum price gap, it almost always does.
- Choose the 36-month term over 12 months where the room's expected service life supports it — the preferred pricing typically absorbs most of a tier upgrade.
- Pair Platinum-tier rooms with Clarity Remote Monitoring so the highest-criticality spaces get both proactive detection and guaranteed on-site response.
If you're building a maintenance plan across multiple room types, sites, or an estate that includes equipment Creation Networks didn't originally install, our team can review the room list and return a tier recommendation per space rather than a single blanket plan. Start with the Creation Care Maintenance & Support page for the full plan finder, or call to talk through a mixed-tier proposal.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the difference between the three Creation Care tiers?
Response speed and preventive maintenance depth. Silver: 4-hour request response, 48-hour on-site, 1 preventive visit/year. Gold: 2-hour response, 24-hour on-site, 2 visits/year, loaner equipment subject to availability. Platinum: 30-minute response, 4-hour on-site, 4 visits/year, guaranteed dedicated spare stock, and proactively managed firmware updates.
Can Creation Care maintain AV equipment we didn't buy from Creation Networks?
Yes. Creation Care is vendor-agnostic. Onboarding starts with a system documentation audit — every endpoint inventoried, configurations captured, firmware levels identified, and anything past end of life flagged — before the system joins the program with the same SLA protections as work Creation Networks installed itself.
How is Creation Care different from Clarity Remote Monitoring?
Creation Care is the hardware-first program: scheduled preventive visits, on-site dispatch, warranty and spare-parts management. Clarity is the 24/7 telemetry layer that sits on top of it, catching drift before it becomes a failure. Most business-critical environments run both together.
What's the contract length, and can we mix tiers across sites?
Terms are typically 12 or 36 months, with 36-month agreements getting preferred pricing. Yes, mixing tiers by room criticality within one master agreement is a common pattern — headquarters and high-traffic boardrooms on Platinum, regional offices on Gold, satellite rooms on Silver, all under one invoice.
Related Resources
- Clarity Remote Monitoring: 24/7 AV System Monitoring Powered by Q-SYS Reflect
- NETGEAR Switch Support Contracts: Sprint vs. Overdrive vs. Custom Fastlane Explained
- Why AV Support and Maintenance Contracts Are Critical for Your Bottom Line
- Maintenance Plans & Extended Warranties
Creation Networks, Inc. — nationwide commercial AV integrator, CTS-D certified, based in Concord, CA and Incline Village, NV. Design, engineering, programming, installation, and support from a single point of contact since 2006. Call 888-230-3661 or email sales@creationnetworks.net.
