Why Most Operation Managers Hate Taking Customer Phone Calls

The phone rings, "Ring..... Ring....". 

You check your caller  ID, see that its one of your customers, and think, "Oh no... What went wrong now?"

Sound familiar? 

Unfortunately, that's exactly how most Operation Managers operate in the security industry. After all, its pretty rare to have a customer call you to say how awesome your guard is doing or how much they appreciate your hard work. 

After spending more than 26 years in the industry, I have heard it all. Listed below are the most common reasons operation managers in the security industry hate answering customer phone calls.

They're going to complain about guard performance.

Poor guard performance covers a whole slew of possibilities including:

• The officer showed up late to the post, or left a little early, or both. 
  
  
• The officer wasn't properly dressed or groomed. We've all probably had an officer show up in their weekend, "I'm here to relax" outfit rather than the professional (expensive) one you provided. 
  
  
• The customer caught the officer out of position (like asleep in their car) or even worse, in an unauthorized area. (Here's an article on Geofencing vs. Breadcrumb Tracking to make sure this never happens again).
  
  
• The customer complains about the new officer you put on site because their usual guy called off sick at the last minute. It just so happens that the new guy wasn't listening to the supervisor during training and didn't bother reading the post orders (which, you spent hours writing). 

They're going to complain about the report.

The reports always seem to be a hot topic including when:

• The officer didn't include enough details about an event in the incident report (like where it happened).
  
  
• Or the officer included the wrong address, which caused your customer to deliver a violation to the wrong resident. 
  
  
• Maybe the officer wrote a detailed report but the handwriting was so bad that it looked like a different language. (The security industry is notorious for this). 

• Another common complaint is that the officer failed to report an emergency event like in the example below.

"I had a customer call me one time because the officer failed to report that the fire department was called on site. I later learned that the fire department and first responders responded to the property because a tenant thought they saw smoke coming from the dumpster. It turned out to be a false alarm so the officer did't feel the need to include the event in his incident report. Or so he said.. I checked the GPS location of his earlier reports and found that he was reporting from his house" - James M., Operations Manager, Atlanta

They're going to dispute their bill.

The chances are pretty good that you have an entire department dedicated to handling these complaints. Unfortunately, it can be very difficult to collect from your customers in the security industry. Delayed payments can be a sign that the customer is either not happy or that they are undervaluing your services. 

Luckily, we have four amazing techniques that can be used to help you collect on past due accounts without losing the customer.  

Although I can't promise to solve all of the problems listed above (there's not much I can do about the officer's grooming habits, I'll leave that to you). But, I have helped 100's of companies overcome these problems, and more, in the past. 

You can book a demo with one of our product specialists who are dedicated to helping companies just like yours use Silvertrac to manage their guards and retain their customers.