Protection 1 Continues on Upward Path as Installer of the Year Runner-Up

A perennial candidate as Installer of the Year in the large company category, Protection 1 chalks up a runner-up honor this time around after a year that saw continued growth, as well as a big change as P1 was merged with fellow security giant ADT under the ownership of Apollo Global Management.

Protection 1 continues to impress in its sheer size and scope. The Boca Raton, Fla.-based company serves residential, commercial, integrated systems, national and enterprise customers via more than 200 branch offices in the U.S. and Canada with roughly 20,000 employees.

P1 offers intrusion, fire, life-safety, home automation, video, access control, network security and monitoring, and runs six fully redundant UL and The Monitoring Association (formerly CSAA) certified call centers.

Thanks to the merger with ADT, 2 million of P1’s 7 million accounts are ADT Pulse smart home customers.

“With new entrants and big dollars being spent to drive lead flow and lure customers to switch and sign up, it remains critical that we distinguish ourselves in the life-safety business, while being fully immersed in home automation delivery,” says Chief Marketing Officer Jamie Haenggi. “In addition, we enable the customer to buy what they want, how they want, through new programs like ADT Canopy and ADT Anywhere and partnerships with leading technology companies like Amazon, LG and Samsung.”

Under CEO Tim Whall’s leadership since 2010, the company has transformed from an organization that was focused primarily on residential and light commercial, to a thriving and growing full-service security company covering a broad range of customers and markets, Haenggi notes.

Today, Protection 1/ADT continues to serve the residential market through multiple distribution channels such as inside sales, field sales, DIY systems, dealers and affinity programs with partners such as USAA, Realogy, America Move Assist and AMAC (Association of Mature American Citizens), she details.

Currently a core area of focus and growth has been in the national accounts space, guided by Sr. Vice President Bob Dale.

With over triple-digit national account revenue growth over the past six years, P1 attributes that success to taking the time in the beginning to do it right and allow for word-of-mouth and referrals to build in that market, says Haenggi.

In addition to focusing national customers’ account management at a central location in the company’s National Account Operations Center (NAOC) in Dallas, P1 made strategic acquisitions such as Integrated Logistics, Suntera, Camtronics and Cam Connections, Inc. (CCI) to add talent that could expand its offerings from traditional security of intrusion, fire, access and video to include capabilities such as IP video solutions, telecommunications, and network managed services.

“These skills now enable Protection 1’s engineers to help design, build and support large backbone networks to address clients’ various solutions needs,” says Haenggi. “We relentlessly focus on the customer experience — delivering what the customer wants, when they want it — keeping our promises and compensating our employees on customer satisfaction. Because our employees know they make a difference every day, our customers receive their best.”

P1 solves customer inquiries over the phone without transferring to another area of the company 90% of the time.

P1 employs a number of unique programs and practices to serve the customer including Tech Tracker, its proprietary notification system that keeps a customer informed of their technician’s arrival time, and provides a picture of the tech and his or her training/credentials.

The company doesn’t use automated phone trees and answers customers’ calls with an attendant in less than three rings and nine out of 10 times can solve the inquiry without transferring to another area of the company, Haenggi enthuses.

Same-day service is standard and not an upcharge, she adds. As Haenggi mentioned, the employees do have plenty of incentive to perform at high levels.

Every employee from call center operator to executive management has metrics for their position based on serving the customer better, she says.

The metrics are monitored and measured daily to reward those who meet or exceed their metrics or council those that made need improvement.

The company uses key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure and adjust its approach on a daily basis. It has developed daily scorecards that track overall corporate performance on 80 line-items and provides a breakdown of performance by field branch on those items, Haenggi explains.

“Our solid commitment to our customers is demonstrated from the top down,” she says. “Our CEO, Tim Whall, personally visits and interacts with employees at all locations across the country annually. Investing in our employees pays off for our customers and differentiates us from competitors by delivering the lowest attrition rate in the security industry.”

BEST OF THE BEST: Check out the rest of the winners and runners-up here!

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