ADT 2012 Annual Report Download - page 98

Field Operations
We serve our customer base from approximately 200 sales and service offices located throughout the United
States and Canada. From these locations our staff of approximately 3,900 installation and service technicians
provides security and home/business automation system installations and field service and repair. We staff our
field offices to efficiently and effectively make sales calls, install systems and provide service support based on
customer needs and our evaluation of growth opportunities in each market. We maintain the relevant and
necessary licenses related to the provision of installation and security and related services in the jurisdictions in
which we operate.
Monitoring Facilities and Support Services
We operate six fully redundant monitoring facilities located across the United States and Canada. We
employ approximately 3,800 monitoring center customer care professionals, who are required to complete
extensive initial training and receive ongoing training and coaching. All monitoring facilities hold U.L. listings as
protective signaling services stations. U.L. specifications for monitoring centers cover building integrity, back-up
computer and power systems, staffing and standard operating procedures. Insurers of certain customers require
U.L. listing of the monitored security provider as a condition of insurance coverage. In the event of an emergency
at one of our monitoring facilities (e.g., fire, tornado, major interruption in telephone or computer service or any
other event affecting the functionality of the facility), all monitoring operations can be automatically transferred
to another monitoring facility. All of our monitoring facilities operate 24 hours a day on a year-round basis.
Incoming alarm signals are routed via an internal communications network to the next available operator, which
allows for real-time load sharing across these facilities.
Customer Care
We maintain a service culture aimed at “Creating Customers for Life” because developing customer loyalty
and continually increasing customer tenure is an important value driver for our business. To maintain our high
standard of customer service, we provide ongoing high quality training to call center and field employees and to
dealer personnel. We also continually measure and monitor key operating and financial metrics, including
customer satisfaction oriented metrics across each customer touch point.
Customer care specialists answer non-emergency inquiries regarding service, billing and alarm testing and
support. Our monitoring centers provide customers with telephone and Internet coverage 24 hours a day on a
year-round basis. To ensure that technical service requests are handled promptly and professionally, all requests
are routed through our customer contact centers. Customer care specialists help customers resolve minor service
and operating issues related to security and home/business automation systems and in many cases are able to
remotely resolve customer concerns. We continue to implement new customer self-service tools via interactive
voice response systems and the Internet, which will provide customers additional choices in managing their
services.
Suppliers
We purchase equipment and components of our products from a limited number of suppliers and
distributors, including certain subsidiaries of Tyco. We maintain minimal inventories of equipment and
components at each field office. Generally our third-party distributors maintain safety stock of certain key items
to cover any minor supply chain disruptions. We also utilize dual sourcing methods to minimize the risk of a
disruption from a single supplier. We do not anticipate any major interruptions in our supply chain.
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