Commercial Integrator + Security Sales September 2024 - 60

SSI
AWARDS: POLICE DISPATCH QUALITY
Bates continues, " There is always
room for improvement, and once you
build a great company, you don't stay
great. You've got to keep working hard to
maintain a level of excellence. What we're
doing today doesn't mean it's going to
work for us a year from now, or five years
from now. We are constantly looking to
improve ourselves. "
" That's where we go and network with
other alarm dealers, " he says. " We're very
excited about doing that with Pye-Barker
and sharing best practices. A lot of what
we do is not because we came up with it.
It's ideas that we've brought from other
companies. We take the best and leave
the rest. "
According to Bates, " Our recipe for
success is really built on the tools that our
partners bring to us and [those of] other
dealers and other alarm companies that
we network with - things that we hear
that they're doing. "
Finding the Right Partner
Bates Security made Rapid Response
its central station a little more than
two years ago. According to Bates, " We
worked aggressively to implement all the
tools that they brought to the table. "
" We made a conscious effort to make
sure that we're using the rapidSMS texting
feature where you can cancel an alarm or
request a dispatch and communicate with
other contacts, " he says. " We're making
sure that we're leveraging the reports
that they can give us: their OHE report.
Then, we try to leverage what each of our
partners - Resideo for residential, DMP
for commercial and Sonitrol - brings to
the table. "
According to Bates, " It's about keeping
your eyes open, your ears open for
new ideas that they bring to the table
and not being afraid to leverage those
things. Don't get stuck in the way you
do things. "
" Technology is certainly something
that really has helped us, " he says. " Most
phone calls don't get answered, but
customers can be much more responsive
to texting. I know I personally am. Why
would my customers be any different?
Having good partners can provide you
Bates Security uses
audio and video
verification of its
systems to ensure
they're doing what
they should do when
they should do it.
excellent tools that you make sure you
leverage what's next. "
Neil Riveron, senior account manager
at Rapid Response Monitoring, says the
company's relationship with Bates Security
started informally more than four
years ago when the companies started
talking about how it would look if they
worked together.
" They put a lot of time into increasing
their industry knowledge by participating
in industry events which help expand
upon best practices. By aligning yourself
with a partner that shares similar values,
you can really see how that time and
effort pays off. "
Morgan Hertel, vice president of technology
and innovation at Rapid Response
Monitoring, says Bates' commitment to
metrics helps their relationship flourish.
" Not only does it empower individuals
to be major contributors in how the
business succeeds or fails, but it also
demands that the organization run on
solid metrics, " says Hertel.
" It's one of the reasons why Jeremy
really likes what we do, because we're
such a data-driven organization. Being
able to get him the data that he needs to
change his business, and to be able to fall
in line with that governance requirement,
was really an important thing for Jeremy, "
he says.
" Being able to get those metrics in front
of him allowed his team to really change
the way that works, " Hertel says. " Seventy
[or] 75% of all the customer interactions
are with the monitoring center. And
whether that's a dispatch or a false alarm,
somebody needs to get service at 2 a.m. "
" Those interactions can be good, or
they can really be bad, " he says. " If they're
60 Commercial Integrator+Security Sales & Integration | September 2024
bad, or they're more frequent than a
customer thinks that they should be, then
that directly turns to customer satisfaction,
to churn in the organization and
turnover - both on the customer side but
also the employee side. "
" Being able to give them that data
that you needed to be able to see which
accounts are having problems, which
accounts are more than chatty, which
customers need service...things like
that...he was able to reduce all those
key metrics significantly over the first
year and watched his customer service
and interactions drop because he got
the accounts that needed to be serviced
under control..., " says Hertel.
" It's a great partnership, because those
same key metrics go both ways, " he says.
" Things like how fast you get to an alarm
event, how quickly you can call and get a
hold of people, [and] how your notifications
work. We can also see from those
numbers if we're doing a good job, or we
need improvement somewhere. "
Hertel continues, " There may be times,
for example, where we're over-notifying
on something because of a problem with
a product or something like that, so we
can now work together to say, 'Look, let's
do something different with those particular
accounts that isn't just completely
bothering the consumer. Let's look at
doing an electronic methodology and
doing something a little different than we
did before.' "
" Having somebody that is also paying
attention to the numbers...that is also
looking for ways to keep their scores
up...it makes for a really good partnership
between the two organizations, and
Jeremy's really good about articulating
what he wants, what he needs, " he
says. " And then we're really good about
saying, 'OK, here's the results of what
that looks like.' "
" It's been a lot of fun working with the
team because their leadership model
[and] their governance model really
forces that relationship to be good, " Hertel
concludes. " And because everybody's
empowered to do a good job, things don't
fall on deaf ears over there. And that's
refreshing to see. " SSI
Commercial Integrator + Security Sales September 2024

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