Re: Monitoring station response time

[rwies@xxxxxxxx]

Central station response time is a daily issue with me.  I manage Monitoring
America Alarm Co-Op.

Response time is measured from the time we receive the alarm signal to the
time a dispatcher has it on their screen for processing.  Our average
response time on a burglary alarm signal is about 16 seconds.  The time
necessary to make the call to the location may run another 30 seconds
depending on telephone companies.  All in all, we want the phone at the
location to be ringing within 60 seconds of the receipt of the alarm signal.

Now, what was describes is under normal conditions.  Central station
staffing is difficult.  If you over staff, you are wasting money on
unnecessary personnel.  If you under staff, your response times go up.  We
watch our response times under normal circumstances and staff accordingly.
We have recently increased our dispatcher staffing by one person between the
hours of 07:00 - 23:00 Monday - Saturday.  We staff lighter on Sunday and
graveyard.

We have an advantage over most central stations, we are a ?not for profit?
business.  We are a cooperative and owned by our customers, the alarm
dealers.  Our focus is on service, not profit.  We are overstaffed according
to most central stations managers.  Our daytime dispatchers work about 60%
of their 8 hour shift.  They are waiting for the phone to ring or an alarm
to occur the other 40% of the time.  Our evening shift reports about the
opposite, work 40%, wait 60%.  Graveyard works even less.  Since our owners
are also our customers, this is what they want.

Since we monitor coast to coast we are effected by various weather
conditions.  We get thunderstorms from across the country, hurricanes from
the Southeast and various other conditions elsewhere.  We can never be
staffed the way we would like during these weather situations.  Our response
times will go up during these types of conditions.  However, these
situations occur for short durations a few times a year.  The worst part
storms is that response times are delayed in areas not directly effected by
the storm.

We do modify our procedures in what we call storm mode.  We follow the call
list through authority dispatch and then put the incident on hold.  We
continue this until we have dispatched on all pending events.  We then go
back and continue the call lists to notify respondents.  Sometimes
respondents are annoyed the call to them too as long as it did but generally
when we explain why they understand.  In the grand scheme of things, storms
are a pain in the a** but not a big deal.

If you experience long response times on a normal basis perhaps you should
look for another central station.