• Mrs. Smith wants to tell the central station she’s going on vacation for a week.
• The Jones family wants to add a hardwired smoke detector in the second-floor hallway.
• Mr. Gomez wants to provide his neighbor’s name as a referral.
• Ms. Brown is complaining about her recent billing statement.

“Hold, please, while I transfer your call to the proper department.”

Up until March 1998, that’s the likely response given by a Brink’s Home Security customer service operator fielding incoming phone calls at the company’s call center in Dallas. Today, thanks to a sophisticated relational database management system, Brink’s operators are likely able to assist every customer no matter what the situation.

The new MASterMind(tm) software, developed for Brink’s by Monitoring Automation Systems (MAS) in Irvine, Calif., merges five previously separate software systems—billing, sales, marketing, customer service and customer initiation—into one flexible system.

The anticipated customer service results will be: higher customer retention, better personnel management, more efficient use of service technicians in the field, and reduced costs in the national central station. The system also contains modules applicable for smaller alarm companies.

Old System Required Multiple Transfers
In late 1994, Brink’s partnered with MAS—its central station software provider—to create a back-office system to bring several function together, from customer service to sales to marketing to installations.

The system allows a Brink’s customer service rep to handle an incoming phone call “from cradle to grave.” For example, every time the company is contacted by a customer or vice versa, the system tracks what occurs.

The software maintains a file history on aspects of a customer’s activities, behaviors and preferences that are necessary to provide security; it even tracks past clients who sell their homes and move.

On the marketing side, the software tracks the affinity marketing programs with which Brink’s has relationships. It has a prospecting module so a sales manager can track prospects. It has a sales module that automatically allows the customer service rep to bring up a telemarketing script if a caller is identified as a prospect.

It also has a real-time service dispatch component that allows Brink’s to schedule its service techs, schedule the jobs, and provide the field technician with all the information he may need for the job.

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