Re: Average Response Time

[Joe Lucia <joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My thoughts exactly.  Obviously it must be the op-pickup-time to be a
12.55 second response, it does take humans a few more seconds to
comprehend what they are looking at before blindly dialing the customer.

I also wonder if the events are auto-assigned to the available operators
as they come in, which drastically reduces the "response" time but
doesn't mean the Operator has actually "responded", just his workstation
did.  I believe larger monitoring centers with a lot of operators
typically auto-assign events.  We don't, all operators see and hear the
pending alarms list as events hit.  It's up to the operators to
get-next-available signal.  We don't have enough operators to warrant
auto-assigning.  If I auto-assigned events it looks like it would
happen, on average, within about 5 seconds (it takes on average less
then 4 seconds from the time the receiver spits out the signal until it
hits an operators screen).

Most often, if I set my alarm off at home, by the time I walk to the
keypad to shut it off and head back to the phone to call the monitoring
center, it's too late, my phone is ringing, they are already calling
me.  That's an acceptable response time.  As mentioned, there is always
the exception when all operators are busy.  Our operators also try to
watch the pending alarms list while handling events, if a high-priority
event comes in (fire, medical, panic) they will typically stop calling
RP's on their current event and grab the high-priority event.  It's
amazing how efficiently the system works with a few seasoned operators.
It doesn't matter how fast the system is if the operators are being lazy
or if the dealer puts a ton of special-instruction messages on the
account that the operator must read before they can actually respond to
it.  We try to eliminate these types of messages and script it into the
event actions for the operator so they just
"follow-the-yellow-brick-road" as we say.  Less interpretation is
required, hence, less mistakes.

Okitoki wrote:

>Dear Lucia,
>
>In Monitoring (whether it be COPS or someone else) there are two issues
>that can give information on the performance of the CMS.
>
>The first issue is the Responce time. This is the time it takes for the
>opperator to just pick up the alarm. So when an alarm drops into the
>window of the automation to the time that the opperator picks up the
>the event is the responce time. Some people may consider that 12.55
>seconds is too long... "What are they waiting for?". But considering
>the fact that the opperator will have many more alarms (for example
>late closing or early opening), this responce time (if it is true) is
>actually good.
>
>The second issue is the action time. This is the time it takes from
>receiving the signal to the time the operator clicks on "save event".
>This time gives you the idea of how long it takes for the operator to
>complete all listed calls (or completing the "to do" list) and finally
>click on save. So COPS must also inform of their action time. Because
>just responding to an alarm and pending it does not give true values.
>
>I have been trying to find a mathematical relation between these two
>figures and have found some for some countries. Unfortunately the US is
>not on my list as the service type differs from CMS to CMS.
>
>I hope this gives you some idea on the situation. Good luck.
>
>
>