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Optimising the control room

Chubb Fire and Security has a network of computerised alarm monitoring centres throughout South Africa all of which are linked via a wide area network (WAN). The centres are maintained in accordance with national requirements set out by South African Intruder Detection Services Association (SAIDSA).

Chubb’s monitoring centre procedures have been refined over the years so as to eliminate any potential loopholes. These are also revised annually and updated if and where applicable to ensure they are kept abreast of the changing times.

“We have the ability to measure the average time the monitoring centres take to action alarms on a daily basis, and as a result, are able to improve the response time on high priority alarms,” says Francois van der Westhuizen, manager, national monitoring operations at Chubb Fire and Security. “We also monitor this average time via a real-time display in each of the monitoring centres and this enables us to identify high influx situations enabling us to respond to any potential delays in the shortest possible time.”

Training of call centre applicants

Chubb’s monitoring centre operators undergo a full screening before being employed by the company. The screening process is a pre-requisite to the interview process. Ideal candidates are those who have experience in the call centre industry or who have worked in and have experience in a customer service background. They must be matric graduates and be computer literate. Candidates must also be registered with the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority.

“We do voice assessments, typing and spelling tests and successful candidates proceed to a thorough interview process conducted by a panel of people, consisting of the monitoring centre manager, the training officer and a supervisor,” says van der Westhuizen.

Once selected, there is an intensive training course covering customer care, health and safety, ethics, standard operating procedures, system training etc. Candidates practice dealing with non-live alarms which are generated on a training database. “Only after passing all these tests would candidates be allowed to deal with live alarms whilst under observation of a supervisor,” continues van der Westhuizen.

Quality of work

Van der Westhuizen says his company assesses the quality of work done by their call centre operators on a daily basis. “Part of the supervisor’s function is to listen to random calls taken by each operator and to assess the quality of each call. We also have different projects focusing on specific issues which we assess by extracting the relevant data from the system. All positive incidents are scrutinised by looking at all actions taken (or not taken) from activation through to conclusion.”

Chubb suggests the following pertinent questions should be asked of your security provider regarding their monitoring centre before employing their services:

* Does the company make use of its own monitoring centre or does it subcontract the monitoring part of the business?

* Does the company have more than one monitoring centre with sufficient redundancy? If an area is prone to power problems, it is imperative that there are redundancy measures in place to deal with alarm and panic signals during these disruptions.

* Is the company’s monitoring centre capable of monitoring various types of signals which include opening/closing, burglary, panic, emergency, medical emergency, power failures etc? Is it also possible to transmit this data to a client’s cellphone via SMS?

* Does the company have enough back-up equipment in the case of equipment failure?

* Does the company own the radio frequency used to transmit signals from the alarm to the control room or is it rented monthly?

* Is the company SAIDSA registered?

* Does all applicable staff have PSIRA registration?

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