Handle with Care

What happens when you activate your Identicom device? Who’s handling your call and what happens next?

Well, the first thing to remember is we handle every call in-house. We don’t outsource a single thing, and why would we; our ARC staff have over 75 years’ combined experience manning our state-of-the-art, in-house, Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC).

The SoloProtect ARC is audited and approved against BS8591 and EN50518, it uses the latest alarm handling technology, ensuring that audio alarms from a lone worker are presented to our Operators quickly and efficiently. Every second counts in a genuine 'Red Alert' situation; so enabling a highly trained Operator to listen to, assess, and record, the lone worker alarm as soon as possible is imperative; providing the fastest possible response is part of our promise.

We can also tailor a workflow to your requirements; meaning you have control of your escalation lists, how and who we contact during an activation and who is informed. This can be particularly useful if you have a user with a pre-existing medical condition. 

When a ‘Red Alert’ is triggered an ARC Operator will receive the activation through automatic allocation or by selecting the highest priority event in the alarm queue. The Operator will then deduce whether the alert is genuine or false.

A genuine ‘Red Alert’ is when a direct risk to the user is present and requires monitoring and/or requires a response from the emergency services.

Key indicators on the audio may include:

• Verbal abuse
• Physical abuse
• Physical abuse likely to occur
• Mention of weapons
• User requests the emergency services
• Other direct risks to the user or member of the public present

False alerts are classified as alerts that have been activated accidentally. This could mean that someone has pressed the ‘Red Alert’ button without knowing or perhaps the ripcord has accidentally been removed.

Examples of key indicators of a False Alert are:

• Laughing/Joking on the audio
• No cues from the user that a risk is present
• Car Radio
• Normal conversation
• The user confirms that it was an accidental activation

When a ‘Red Alert’ is picked up the Operator will access the audio immediately and begin verification. When an alert is activated we will be listening in within 2 - 4 seconds; our team is fully trained to risk assess the situation and make a decision on whether or not to escalate the alert.

In all ‘Red Alert’ activations, the audio will be monitored unless the situation becomes safe or requires emergency services. Once the ‘Red Alert’ is confirmed as safe the Operator will get confirmation from the user or an escalation point, and only then will the ‘Red Alert’ be closed; we own every activation until it's fully closed down.

No matter what time of the day you work, whether you work evenings, overnight or weekends - if you activate a 'Red Alert' on your Identicom our team of highly trained Operators will be there for you.

Shaun Crawford, SoloProtect ARC Assistant Manager, discusses lone worker alarm handling.