Support Person of the Year
Despite Serving in Different Departments at Separate Companies, Michelle Quattrini & Deepak Bysani Share a Deep Commitment to Ensuring Smooth Operations
They say two is better than one, and the winners of this year’s Support Person of the Year Award are a perfect example.
Michelle Quattrini first worked at Rapid Response Monitoring Services during college as a data entry representative. She graduated college in 2009 with a degree in music education — “a terrible time to graduate with a degree in music education” due to the recession — so she decided to stay at Affiliated.
“The longer I stayed in the company, and the more that I learned about the industry, the more I enjoyed what I was doing,” she says. “I just decided to make a career out of it.”
Her current position is a hybrid role: she works with some dealers exclusively, but she also uses her education experience to help with training in different departments.
“I just love being able to help solve problems and make a customer experience better,” she says. “Internally, I am in a position now where I'm able to coach and train our department. So with my experience, I can identify those areas where we need more coaching and training and really just provide the tools necessary to provide that higher level of customer service to our dealers and end users.”
She hasn’t given up music, however. She is a member of the Camillus Community Band and works as the music and drill coordinator for Auburn High School.
Learn About the Support Person of the Year Finalist
Nick Salmond has worked at AvantGuard Monitoring for almost 13 years. He currently serves as an implementation specialist, where he provides technical support needed for onboarding, training on products and services, and anything else a dealer needs. He has been an integral part of AvantGuard Monitoring’s growth and is an exceptional team player. Salmond has cooked a complete Thanksgiving dinner — turkey and all — for the entire shift on Thanksgiving several years in a row.
“Music for me is just a huge stress reliever,” she says. “It’s nice to just go home and hang out with these marching band kids who I genuinely love. They’re my family.”
As the director of information technology, Deepak Bysani is responsible for maintaining alarm receivers, Affiliated’s automation system, its telephony platform and its computer telephone integration, all of which are integral parts of operating the monitoring center.
“My golden rule for 100 percent uptime is redundancy, redundancy and redundancy with automatic failover of services,” he says. “Being on call 24/7/365 can add pressure; and even after years with Affiliated, there is always a small pinch of nervousness when we get a call on an issue. But we are very lucky here at Affiliated that our infrastructure is more or less bulletproof.”
Bysani isn’t fazed by pressure. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he helped get more than 300 laptops configured for work-from-home operations while assisting with training, procurement and delivery of equipment. During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Bysani made careful choices that allowed Affiliated’s facility to operate with minimal disruptions, despite being in the path of the super storm.
“Being a technical person, I’m very happy to be involved in this challenging, highly redundant area of the security industry,” he says. “I enjoy being able to be innovative when providing unique and robust technical solutions.”
IMAGES COURTESY OF MICHELLE QUATTRINI & COURTESY OF AFFILIATED MONITORING
