With a new season in bloom, it’s the perfect time for central stations to shift from start-of-year planning to action and growth. This is a crucial time to fine-tune operations, revisit your priorities, and plan for potential challenges.
Whether you’re integrating new technology or reevaluating your staffing strategy, this is the time to position your central station for a strong and resilient year ahead. Let’s take a look at the opportunities ripe for the picking now.
#1. Cultivate a new way to grow: become the go-to place to work
Focusing on employee satisfaction and minimizing turnover is one of those evergreen goals that can often get pushed aside as you deal with more immediate business concerns. But taking a people-first approach and making your central station a desirable place to work can go a long way in attracting—and keeping—the best talent.
Guardian Alarm, a security dealer that also provides in-house central station monitoring, was named SDM Magazine’s 2024 Dealer of the Year because they do this so well. They’re set to achieve less than 30% turnover (down from the 60% range) at their call center thanks to making meaningful improvements to their operations, including:
- Building an inclusive “One Team” culture
- Using a predictive index to find the right candidates based on personal strengths and personality, and then putting them in roles where they can thrive
- Partnering with PayScale to ensure they pay fairly and competitively
- Transitioning to a better onboarding process, including a whole day for new hires to meet the team and experience the culture
Their multi-pronged effort is paying off, inspiring people to stay at the company longer. This, in turn, has minimized the need to constantly fill vacant positions, which can waste precious resources and time. As chief customer officer Jay Autrey told SD Magazine, “If you are constantly churning through people, you are never going to build the foundation to do what you want to do.”
#2. Have a plan for the no-response policies sweeping U.S. police departments
We know that the majority of triggered home alarms are false alarms—and that responding to them significantly strains police resources. This is why several police departments nationwide are implementing no-response policies for unverified alarms. The latest among them is the Seattle Police Department, which recently announced it would only respond to verified alarms backed by video or audio verification, panic alarm, or eyewitness testimony.
But Seattle is no outlier. When Deep Sentinel conducted a study of 765 U.S. cities with populations above 50,000, they discovered that:
- For more than 40% of residents in these cities, the police won’t guarantee a response to residential alarm calls
- Nearly 80% of residents in cities with a population above one million have no guaranteed alarm coverage
- “A total of 26 cities with a combined population of 7,218,593 residents categorically will not respond to alarm calls”
The industry is moving swiftly to respond to this situation: according to The Monitoring Association, the Security Industry Alarm Coalition (SIAC) has been working with police departments to try to replace these measures with a model alarm ordinance to reduce false alarms while continuing police response.
No matter what the outcomes of these efforts are, it’s worth remembering that we, as security professionals, have a lot of power to ensure that customers get the support they need in case of an emergency. It is up to us to do all we can to continue minimizing false alarms and using all available means—including verification technologies—to improve alarm accuracy.
As a central station, it’s important to ensure your client base is covered no matter what. That’s why Bold Group’s Manitou software has teamed up with Sentry AI to provide real-time, AI-enhanced video monitoring for central stations. This can reduce false alarms by helping operators prevent or de-escalate events and offer another point of verification for police response.
#3. Stay current with developing AI and privacy regulations
As a central station, you access and rely on a lot of data, and that comes with a responsibility to safeguard it even as evolving technologies like AI and cloud computing promise to transform the way you work–and the way that data is potentially handled. That’s why it’s important to stay aware of new AI and privacy-focused regulations in an ever-changing technological landscape.
As Ryan Carson, a vice president at Johnson Controls, told SDM Magazine, “As emerging technologies like AI and cloud computing continue to advance, it is inevitable that regulatory compliance frameworks will evolve alongside them. Drawing lessons from previous standards such as GDPR and CCPA, the security industry must remain proactive in adapting its systems to meet the demands of new, rapidly changing regulations. With our understanding of these technologies still in the early stages, 2025 will likely serve as a pivotal year, highlighting the need for heightened ethical and responsible technology use.”
Faisal Pandit, vice president and general manager of global security products at Johnson Controls also told SDM that he predicts new regulations will mean new security roles to keep up with them, including more specialized certification programs in how to apply various regulatory changes.
#4. Add new customers and scale operations while maintaining quality
You may be ready for new growth—but is your infrastructure? Scaling your central station’s monitoring capabilities shouldn’t mean sacrificing response times, overextending your team, or turning away business because you aren’t equipped to grow efficiently.
But if you’re still using outdated systems, it can be hard to manage growing alarm traffic across multiple clients. If this is the case, you could get a significant boost from switching to a smarter, cloud-based monitoring platform that empowers you to deliver fast, accurate, and professional emergency response to a growing client base.
Wondering where to begin? Start with cloud-based alarm monitoring software like Bold Group’s Manitou Cloud Services, a hosted, cloud-based solution complete with redundant data centers. What’s great about this option is that Bold Group’s partnership with OneTel Security ensures you get zero-interruption signaling and voice network capabilities. Best of all, you can monitor and manage hundreds of incoming signals from multiple locations, all from one unified, global dashboard.
How will you grow throughout 2025?
This year offers ongoing chances to grow and adapt: whether it’s responding to changing regulations, finding fresh opportunities for more efficient operations, or building a work culture that attracts the best talent and gives them great reasons to stay, there are plenty of opportunities to strengthen and future-proof your central station this year.
Fortunately, you don’t have to do it alone: at Bold Group, we are proud to help central stations across the nation—and the world—serve their customer base with the latest, most secure, and most effective solutions. Wondering how we can help you do the same? We’d be happy to show you what’s possible.