Q: What precisely is a national account monitoring center?
A: Our focus is to support our national account base, which includes large retail and chain- type businesses with a national footprint, commercial industrial and government accounts, including the U.S. Department of Defense.
A lot of times, we monitor not only burglar and fire alarms but also are responsible for interactive station monitor videos we provide customers after hours when no one’s in the business. We support anyone in the United States, and our business is growing. We’re doing additional hirings as the summer storm season comes into swing.
Q: So how is an individual working at your center in Aurora able to help a situation in Boston, for instance?
A: Our technology not only lets us monitor alarms in other locations, but to use video-over-IP- based networks to look inside and see what’s happening there, positioning our operators to understand what’s there and allowing them to make a good decision on what to do for that business and that situation.
One of the great things is if we see anything out of the ordinary somewhere, when we reach police dispatch, we can provide them with intelligence as they arrive, helping law enforcement better prepare their response. We continue with that information while they are on scene.
Q: You have an in-house recognition program called I Helped Save a Life Today. What is that?
A: With 32,000-plus daily customer interactions, there are a number of real holdup, fire and burglar alarms. To remind our workforce that we really make a difference around the country, we take six to 10 of those and put the information out for the associates to see we really do have an impact.
The call center here, with 500 employees in a 330-seat call center, works with sister centers in Kansas City, Rochester, N.Y., and Jacksonville, Fla. This center is focused on commercial customers. A residential customer here in Denver is likely to have their call answered in one of the three outlying centers. It shows our impact.
For the 1,000 customers in the World Trade Center towers when (the Sept. 11 attacks) happened, we were first here to speak with those working the fire details there. We were trying to work through the confusion, isolate what was happening, and support them.
We touch many lives.
Edited for length and clarity by David Migoya.
