How Protection 1 Makes Sure Every 1 Counts

SSI’s annual Best of the Best issue (July 2013) includes profiles of seven of the industry best-run installing security contracting companies. My interviews with executives and managers from runner-up Protection 1 covered much ground not included in print. Following is the first of a few bonus excerpts, with P1’s Jamie Haenggi here addressing customer service issues. Be on the lookout for more online extras from P1, as well as other Installer of the Year and Integrated Installation of the Year winners and finalists.

How does your company provide exceptional service to its customers? How is it evaluated and continually improved?

Jamie Haenggi, Protection 1 Chief Marketing & Customer Experience Officer: We provide exceptional service to our customers by keeping it as our cornerstone. Every employee in every location knows that he/she is responsible for delivering an exceptional customer experience in every interaction. From call centers to branches to corporate offices, each has its own strategy and metrics to measure customer service—in combination, these interactions have delivered a 95.6% customer satisfaction rating, and A+ BBB rating and the lowest attrition rate in the industry. Our leadership walks the walk, not just talks the talk when it comes to customers. They are personally involved and knowledgeable about the details. We do not rally employees around financial numbers or growth numbers, rather around customer experience statistics. Our belief has always been that if we treat the customer right, we will grow, and grow profitably. We measure customer satisfaction, every day, in nearly every transaction. Our central station metrics revolve around “a perfect day” which reflects our speed and quality for serving customers. We answer each and every call in less than 60 seconds and transfer less than 10% of them to another department. Our field operations focus on “in-standard” rates for same day service. We also receive thousands of customer surveys each month that give us a timely pulse of satisfaction ratings.

We have an excellent customer contact strategy that involves both our centers and our field offices to help establish and continue to build relationships with our customers. For example, our commercial customers receive regular calls from our account management team. This team checks in to see if contact lists need to be updated, if there are any issues they can help with and also offer a complementary site review. We track and measure the frequency of these calls and visits, along with satisfaction scores. Even our residential customers receive calls and visits. We believe that a happy customer helps grow the business through referrals. Our retention team is one of the best. We take each loss personally—really. We also use financial insights to review profitability on customers and reinvest those dollars with our save efforts. When it comes to local, key accounts each and every cancel is reviewed personally by myself and additional efforts are made to save these customers and understand where we had a break down in the experience. We simply do not give up. It is not uncommon to have executive leaders jump in to save a residential customer as well. There is a firm belief that “Every 1 Counts at Protection 1.”

Please supply some specific examples of your customer service in action.

Haenggi: There are so many to choose from! When we got rid of our IVR, allowing actual people to answer all of our customer calls, we got a lot of positive feedback. This means when a customer calls, after 1 ring, we pick up, not a machine. No buttons to push to get to the right department. Technology helps routes customers who have just had an alarm right to the agent that may have dispatched on their alarm. Our “old-fashioned,” personal touch is what our wows our customers. Our same-day service is a big hit with our customers, as well as our Tech Tracker which lets our customers know who is coming to service their account, when they will be there and what they look like. It’s an extra safety precaution that we happily take for our customers to feel completely comfortable when they hire Protection 1. Our technicians are some of our greatest customer experience drivers. We constantly get feedback from our customers saying, “Your tech was so professional” and “He/she explained everything to me in an easy-to-understand way” or “Thanks for sending <fill in any tech name here> – he was great!” And our National Account Operations Center was uniquely designed to offer a fully integrated team approach to our national accounts – this means our sales support, engineers, cross-functional account rep for service, billing and support, and monitoring all sit together and are assigned to select accounts to support and manage. The team daily reviews key data to proactively respond and manage these special accounts to help reduce activity and keep our customers informed.

Scott Goldfine

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About the Author

Contact:

Scott Goldfine is the marketing director for Elite Interactive Solutions. He is the former editor-in-chief and associate publisher of Security Sales & Integration. He can be reached at [email protected].

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