A third-party central station essentially becomes an extension of your business. You want your central station to be reliable, have integrity, and to always have your employees’ and customers’ best interests in mind. That’s why we exceed the standards it takes to become UL Listed, FM Approved and TSA Five Diamond Certified, but also create a positive culture where your business and AvantGuard can both grow and thrive.
There are over 2,700 monitoring centers, in the United States, many of which can be found via the alarm exchange. Of that 2,700, less than 200 of them can say that they have earned The Monitoring Association Five Diamond designation. Year after year, Avantguard continues to earn the Five Diamond designation through a great commitment to job related training, relationship building with our partners and dealers, as well as a commitment to customer service and technology.
AvantGuard takes great pride in hiring and training operators. In fact, our in-depth training and vetting of operators for specific personality and characteristic traits is what makes AvantGuard Monitoring Center operators different from other central stations. We understand that they are the ones who are the point of contact for your customers, and we do everything to ensure that our operators are highly trained and prepared even under the most stressful situations.
In fact, AvantGuard just had two employees receive TMA awards: Amanda Edwards received the TMA Operator of the Year award, and Gavin Butterfield received the Support Person of the Year award for 2020. Gavin and Amanda are great examples of how the AvantGuard training process truly makes great operators and dealer care representatives.
One of AvantGuard’s core values is innovation. Not only does that mean finding the newest, best and most efficient ways to provide our dealers and customers service, but also to be ready and prepared for the unexpected.
Weeks prior to the mass gathering shutdowns, including the postponement of ISC West, AvantGuard was already taking the necessary steps to create an emergency plan to continue service, while keeping employees and the community safe from the spread of the virus.
AvantGuard began testing a virtual workplace by having the IT team set up an encrypted virtual private network for operators to access the necessary monitoring software. Mobile workstations (laptops) were provided to operators as well as a list of guidelines and best practices for monitoring virtually. Through this advanced planning and foresight, AvantGuard was able to meet the virtual workplace guidelines set forth by the UL the moment the new guidelines were released. AvantGuard also joined a live webinar with other central stations in the industry to be a leader and provide insight on how to keep central stations operational amid the pandemic.
Dealers and integrators are spread out all over the country. It can be difficult to coordinate times to get together, meet, build relationships, and talk shop. AvantGuard works hard to create an environment where relationships are built and can grow successfully. We host a number of events throughout the year, such as our Lunch, Learn, and Ski event, or our Elite Adventure Series, to get dealers and partners together to learn about the newest happenings in our industry, start new partnerships, but to also allow them to enjoy themselves. Some of the activities our dealers have joined us in are skiing, fly fishing, riding ATVs and jeeping down in Southern Utah.
AvantGuard has built a culture where our employees can grow and succeed by helping others, but also where your business gets the best technology and customer service available. We call that our “we care F.I.R.S.T,'' model (fun, innovation, relationships, service, technology) and as you can see, it’s what sets us apart from other central stations.