Everyone has stories. Take this year’s Monitoring Center of the Year recipient and the time the company hired a consultant to make sure management was meeting the needs of the millennial generation. Take Carmelo Mosca, TMA’s Monitoring Center Manager of the Year recipient and his focus on not only being the best he can be at his job, but encouraging others to be the best they can be by taking a leadership role in his company’s mentorship program. Listen to the time Monitoring Center Operator of the Year recipient Patricia Fody used her instincts during a routine false alarm call to urge a customer to check on her daughter, who unbeknownst to them was experiencing a medical issue that would ultimately require time in intensive care before a full recovery. Or listen to the time when Beth Bailey, this year’s TMA Monitoring Center Support Person the Year, led her team in developing an internal system now used by all of her company’s customer care employees for processes and policies.
These stories may be unique to each recipient but they all seem to share a common thread: a dedication to the security industry and a culture of constant improvement. Perhaps it’s that dedication that allowed this year’s award recipients to stand out for the Excellence Awards’ judging panel.
The 2018 TMA Monitoring Center Excellence Awards — now in their 13th year — hosted by The Monitoring Association (TMA) and co-sponsored by SDM Magazine, recognize exceptional personnel and central stations in the industry that are certified by an approved Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory (NRTL), such as UL, FM Global and Intertek/ETL.
This year’s award recipients were announced at the opening ceremony of the Electronic Security Expo (ESX) in June.
The 2018 TMA Monitoring Center Excellence Award winners are: Affiliated Monitoring, Monitoring Center of the Year; Carmelo Mosca, Affiliated Monitoring, Manager of the Year; Patricia Fody, Vector Security, Operator of the Year; Beth Bailey, ADT, Support Person of the Year.
“TMA is honored each year to be able to recognize some of the most outstanding individuals and companies in our industry,” says Elizabeth Lasko, vice president of communications and marketing, TMA. “The companies and individuals nominated and chosen as finalists and winners each year are shining examples of how profoundly the monitoring industry takes its responsibility to protect life and property.”
To learn more about this year’s award recipients and their stories, read on. To learn more about the TMA Excellence Awards program and past recipients, visit www.tma.us. Award applications open in January of the year of award and final deadline is in March.
Learn About the Finalists
Both ADT and Vector Security were honored as finalists in the Monitoring Center of the Year category.
With more than 7 million subscribers and six fully redundant monitoring stations, ADT makes it a mission to deliver superior customer service and help save lives and protect property. The company updates its monitoring center manuals monthly to adapt to the ever-changing environment. One recent change ADT made to adapt to customer expectations was removing most of its interactive voice prompts to ensure customers speak to a live agent when inquiring about their alarms or requesting service. The company also invested in improving its monitoring center staff desktop tools, notifications, help centers and agent interfaces — all to help staff respond more quickly to customers.
All three of Vector Security’s monitoring center locations provide complete redundancy and have a dedicated technical support person who gives a monthly disaster drill to supervisors and managers. In addition, to ensure the technical depth of its team members beyond one person and ensure that multiple fully trained tech people are on the floor at all times, Vector has a “tech team” for which members attend two hours of technical training each month, as well as participate in testing and disaster drills. The company also has instituted a “go green policy,” which includes using electronic forms for all data-change requests, giving customers the choice of getting reports electronically, and using SharePoint so that shared information is all in one place without needing to print paper copies.
