Re: Monitoring station response time

["Crash Gordon" <webmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

And that also speaks to the advantage of having a local area CS. We know
when bad weather is coming, we know what areas tend to have powerfails or
flooding, so we can staff appropriately.


<rwies@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:11jd6m074fd6a8@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
| 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.
|