One of the biggest challenges that has faced the security industry historically, which continues to this day, is combatting false alarms. While much of the problem can be attributed to user error, the fact is that until recently, home and business owners had been given relatively few technological tools to reduce their chances of having a false dispatch.
Traditionally, when an alarm is triggered at a premise, the central station attempts to contact the property owner via a phone call, typically a landline. The problem is landlines have become scarce today as people are increasingly using their mobile devices to communicate. As a response, Rapid Response Monitoring this week rolled out a new solution dubbed “rapidSMS” which provides customers with an app-like experience to respond to alarms on their premises via text message.
“If you look at the legacy landscape of the call center and the way that we go ahead and process most of the signals that come into a monitoring center, it is through some sort of phone call… and that used to work great when all used to have landlines in our homes,” explains Spencer Moore, VP of Sales and Marketing for Rapid Response. “The landscape has changed though with how we communicate today, and landlines are a thing of the past. Most folks don’t have them, if they do, they don’t answer them and we’re in a position where the landscape has shifted to everyone has a cellphone… and the missed call really isn’t a problem anymore.”
In fact, Moore says that 73% of the millions of calls Rapid Response makes to customer each month go unanswered. With rapidSMS, Rapid Response wanted to “simplify and expedite” the customer experience, according to Moore, while also helping to reduce false alarms.
“In our mind, these two things go hand-in-hand for some interesting reasons,” he adds. “When you look at false alarms, they really cause a lot of problems for us as an industry – they’re expensive for us, as an industry, for first responders and they can be very expensive especially if you’re looking from a medical perspective because in many jurisdictions if EMS rolls out or the fire department rolls out, you’ll get a charge and that charge can be in the thousands of dollars and it may not be covered by your insurance. That’s not to mention false alarm fees in the security industry.”
According to Moore, 68 percent of the dispatches they make are due to customers not answering their phone.
“That’s a massive, massive amount of calls, it’s a massive amount of calls for service, for first responders, and it puts us in negative light in the first responder community looking at how often our industry is asking them to go do something just because we think something may have happened somewhere based on some sort of electronic system that has been installed,” he adds.
How it Works
When an alarm is triggered with rapidSMS, subscribers are immediately notified of alarm event via text message that enables them to request a dispatch or decline with the push of a button. If the user doesn’t respond within the span of the five-minute timer that accompanies the text, then first responders will be automatically dispatched.
Additionally, customers can see a variety of details related to the alarm itself, such as the zones triggered, the time and type of alarm. Subscribers can also provide a variety of other information to the central station following an alarm via the text, including whether or not they are at the premises, if they will be responding, how far they are away (10 minutes, 15 minutes, etc.), what kind of vehicle they are driving, and so forth.
“You don’t need to download an app, you don’t need to have a special kind of system, and it doesn’t matter if you have Alarm.com, Honeywell, DMP or whoever you’re using for hardware or platform provider because it all comes from us,” Moore explains.
In the short time that rapidSMS has been deployed in the field for beta testing, Moore says they’ve seen a 40% reduction in false alarms.
“We’ve been doing SMS messaging for some time and what we’re finding is we actually have a much higher response rate when we SMS message somebody,” he says. “How often are you in a position where you leave text messages unread for a long period of time?”
For more information about rapidSMS, the company will be hosting an online premiere event for the solution on April 2 at 2 ET. Click here to register.
Joel Griffin is the Editor-in-Chief of SecurityInfoWatch.com and a veteran security journalist. You can reach him at [email protected].
