How Confidential Staff Communications Can Drive Safety and Business Improvements
Regardless of your industry, it is almost certain that certain sections of your business either already use or would benefit from onsite and discrete communications between employees and customers. Consider a few areas where discrete communications are typical but not always so discrete in many businesses:
* On-site security systems * Customer handoff between personnel * Complaint management * Emergency communications
And it is highly probable that you can readily identify additional business areas that use or could benefit from discreet communications. There is no denying the significance of these areas of business, but some of the aspects mentioned are not always apparent from the above headings. Therefore, let’s examine each area in greater detail.
Protection Systems
Long-recognized for its discreet communications, the on-site security solutions may be essential depending on the specific situation. For instance, it would be futile for employees to announce to the world that someone is stealing company property, as this would alert the criminal! However, how often have you witnessed a business being robbed while the security staff merely communicates via two-way radios? It is simply not the optimal solution, as the radio implementation is frequently insufficient, allowing even actual consumers to hear ongoing communications. A superior option would be to use earpieces and microphones that can be almost concealed from view, yet communicate exceptionally well even in noisy environments without allowing others to eavesdrop. Recent alternatives include two-way communicators with security-specific keys that allow users to communicate with one another without being overheard.
Increasingly, on-site paging systems are being integrated with alarm systems in order to discretely alert personnel of security issues. Staff will be aware of the problem, but customers (or anyone else) will be unaware of the security situation, preventing customers from being concerned about the imminent security event; customers will be informed if the situation escalates to a higher level. One solution is a custom transmitter with seven contacts that is compatible with the majority of security systems. Concerning current security issues, the unit can send a completely discreet message to the appropriate personnel. There are numerous methods for initiating messaging, including strategically located press buttons that can activate various messages to staff.
Customer Handover Between Staff
Have you ever observed that in some businesses, consumers are frequently transferred from specialists or single-tasking employees to other employees? For instance, in opticians in the United Kingdom, customers arrive for an eye exam, are greeted by reception, seated in the waiting area, and when the optometrist is available, they are escorted to the test room and “handed over” to the optometrist.
After the eye exam, many optometrists exit the test room with the customer and essentially “hand over” the customer to sales staff so that the customer can select frames and place an order.
However, a well-known optician determined that rather than the optometrist leaving the test room with the customer, it would be more advantageous for the sales staff to retrieve the customer. But how might this be accomplished? The test chamber is equipped with a service button that can send one of six messages, and the optometrist ‘calls’ the sales staff by sending the appropriate message to a discreet text pager. In actuality, multiple members of the sales team are notified, and the first one to arrive ‘cancels’ the call to the room, allowing the others to continue working.
A key advantage of this solution in opticians is that both the ‘trusted optometrist’ and the ‘less trusted sales employees’ end up in the test room with the customer, creating a perfect example of how to transfer customers in that industry. It increases the rate of closure and the company’s profitability, and most importantly, consumers are oblivious that the system is in place.
It is likely that you can conceive of numerous business situations in which a similar situation could be enhanced, as this optician’s entire enterprise of hundreds of sites was. All due to a very discrete staff pager system.
In the automobile sales environment, other examples include service call buttons that summon sales managers to ‘hot’ transactions with consumers. Importantly, the customer is oblivious that the sales representative has summoned the sales manager as a ‘closer’ to the deal, and that the sales’manager’ then offers a’sweetener’ such as carpeting or a ‘tank of petrol’ to close the deal immediately. It could only be accomplished through discrete messaging, and the paging platform is ideal for such purposes.
Complaint Management
There is nothing worse than customers who complain to management while surrounded by other customers in ANY business. Let’s just state that complaining consumers are incompatible with a business’s need for a positive customer environment. If negative experiences are shared on the internet in this manner, it can be extremely costly to a business, even in the short term.
In reality, however, customers have very few options for bringing their dissatisfaction to management’s attention and resolving the issue without’making a commotion’ in front of other customers. When was your last use?
In the past, restaurants (and other industries) utilised a survey instrument in the form of a tip tray, which was subsequently replaced by an iPad. At the conclusion of the meal, the bill was placed on the gratuity tray and the consumer was asked to “complete the electronic questionnaire.” Important inquiries determined whether or not a consumer was satisfied. For instance, “Would you recommend this product to a friend?” was the final query for the consumer to answer. If the customer indicated that they would NOT recommend the restaurant to a friend, the manager received a discreet message informing him that the table X customer was unhappy.
The manager could then visit the customer in a non-confrontational manner and ask if ‘everything was OK’; he would then offer the customer a discount voucher. Importantly, the manager had the opportunity to “turn the customer around” from a dissatisfied customer to a returning customer. If consumers depart a location dissatisfied, the subsequent feedback can be extremely damaging. Unfortunately, the described survey solution has been discontinued for some time.
There are currently applications for mobile phones that allow customers to fill out a similarly designed’survey,’ and if the customer is dissatisfied (through the use of similarly careful key questions in the survey), the manager will receive an SMS to his mobile phone; however, this solution is less ‘immediate’ than the original on-site solution and could be slower at notifying the manager; and the customer could have already left the premises. Other issues could include a lack of phone coverage on-site, as well as customer reluctance to install the application on their smart phone (especially pertinent for customers over the age of 55, as only 25% install apps).
There may be other solutions on the market, but it appears that they have yet to be seen in significant numbers. These comments regarding the handling of consumer complaints are definitely food for thought and provide at least something to consider.
Critical communications
The availability of emergency resources on-site is essential for saving lives. It is essential for emergency services to account for factors such as personnel shortages, power outages, fires, floods, and other negative occurrences that could impact their effectiveness. Who knows, with today’s sources of peril, what emergency teams may have to deal with: terrorists, fire, personal injury, flooding, building collapse, detonation, or any of a hundred other scenarios. And let’s not even contemplate nerve agents! Are you all set? Could your solutions truly satisfy the requirements of all of these extraordinarily complex emergencies?
If you administer a small business, school, or other area where people need to be confined in environments that can manage personal safety, then only a subset of the above may apply. Consider the case of a worker who sustains an injury while performing their normal duties. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that prompt assistance is essential for saving lives. In the United Kingdom, solutions such as emergency call switches that alert emergency teams have literally saved lives on numerous occasions.
Consideration of schools in lockdown situations is more pertinent than ever. There could be a variety of reasons for a lockdown, including dangerous canines on campus, dangerous or menacing individuals (even parents! ), a fire, or many other situations that schools and universities regularly face. Academy Lockdown provides a variety of options for shutting down a school or university and keeping children secure. National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO): The National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO) is a police entity that supports the ‘protect and prepare’ segments of the government’s counter terrorism strategy and has a website that provides advice.
The majority of establishments also receive guidance from local councils regarding lockdown and threat avoidance. Typically, councils provide guidance to aid in the development of a solid, effective procedure. Please consult your local government for guidance on these matters.
There are a multitude of communications options suitable for almost any circumstance, and they can be summarised up as follows:
* Two-way wireless radio * Paging systems * Internet and ‘internet of things’-related systems
Today, wireless two-way radios can be utilised for far more than simple radio communication. There are numerous solutions available, including radio to telephone (landline or mobile) and radio to email. There has been a recent explosion in the number of features that have become standard on digital radio devices. It is also possible to encrypt any transmission so that it is nearly impossible for third parties to decrypt it. Wireless radios have numerous features, such as alarm handling, tele-connect, nurse call, radio management, web interface, access control and IG/GPS, vehicle monitoring, fleet management, remote monitoring, signage integration, live updates, power monitoring, social monitoring, valuables protection, temporary alarms, lone worker protection, and of course internet of things, where radios can become an integral part of any ‘internet of things’-based solution.
And any radio system based on specialised things like TETRA or SEPURA are some of the most secure wireless radio communication systems available; while these solutions are typically used for fire and emergency services (or even councils), these solutions could be used in larger organisations with the obvious benefits, and all can be extremely discrete depending on the equipment used.
Many consider pagers to be “old technology,” which is true in many ways, but things are different now. With the advent of cloud-based communications, things have entered the 21st century, particularly in terms of security and lockdown. It’s true that ‘a pager is a pager,’ but with few exceptions, pagers are typically merely receivers; what’s more important are the methods by which a message could be sent to a pager, rather than the pager itself; the pager is the last link in the communication chain and merely displays what’s received, encrypted or not. There is apparatus available, for instance, that can monitor a “open or closed” connection, and this product may be Internet of Things-based. The messaging could be sent over the cloud and back to other on-site equipment, resulting in a simple encrypted pager message for all parties involved. Obviously, the advantage is that the messaging is extremely discreet. There are so many system options that they are literally beyond the scope (or limitations) of this document.
However, the internet and the ‘internet of things’ have made significant strides in the areas of security, emergency monitoring, and lockdown. And systems with the appropriate technology, such as BLE Bluetooth Low Energy (Version 5 and later), are at the forefront. Historically, Bluetooth technology was extremely limited, particularly in terms of range, and many Bluetooth-based products are still in use today. BLE systems can now track assets, people, change of state of a given device, humidity, water ingress, G force, sound, vibration, location, orientation to horizontal or vertical.. you name it, and BLE technologies with cloud-based infrastructure are an incredible cutting-edge business solution. The importance of BLE cannot be overstated, and there is no doubt that BLE technology will become more prevalent in every business sector imaginable, including yours!
Those who are not well-versed in the available technologies are frequently faced with a decision that requires careful consideration of the precise goals to be attained, the technology option to be implemented, and, of course, the budgetary constraints. This article will hopefully at least inform readers about some of the available options.