July 2, 2011

 

Everyone wants more business, and central stations are certainly no exception. Advertisements for wholesale central station services are in all of the trade publications and competition, usually defined by pricing, is fearse. I believe I recently noticed that the $2 buck line was broken. Free sign up and free months are becoming common come ons. Obviously not every central station has the same credentials or provides the same services or level of service. Pricing may correlate with services, but not necessarily. Anyway, this is not the focus of this article. Recently central stations considered PERS monitoring services and I thought the following exchange among central station managers would be of interest to dealers. If you're selling PERS services you need a separate PERS Contract and you really should make sure your central station is capable of handling PERS monitoring. The following question was posed and another central station manager responded with his answers.

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I would like to ask if anyone is doing PERS. Yes

 

If so, what products are you using? Linear & Caveo

 

Are you monitoring them in your own Central Station? Yes

 

Do you have a separate staff that handles PERS only? No, but I feel it should be separate. Our protocol is that if an operator has a customer that needs EMS on a PERS unit they must stay on with them until help arrives. For every PERS that needs to be dispatched you use 2 operators, one that stays on the phone with the customer and one dispatching EMS. Sometimes the call to EMS can be long due to they want as much information as possible.

anon

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Agreed. Not using much here but have with other companies I’ve worked with. Besides the inordinate operator handle times, your response time must also be taken into account or your existing priorities adjusted i.e. all your available operators handling priority alarms upon receipt of PERS. Additionally, you are going to want to consider the operator handling these types of alarms i.e. maturity/experience/capability.

Data Entry for these accounts is often a consideration as well – very detailed…..entrance codes, medical contacts, medication information.

This service is definitely a bigger commitment all around.

anon