The coronavirus has caused a seismic shift inside ADT’s monitoring centers and several other facilities where the company services its more than six million customers.
In mid-March, the number of ADT contact center employees working from home was close to zero. Now, approximately 88 percent (about 4,300) of ADT employees are working safely at home. Normally, a move of this magnitude would take months; ADT did it in three weeks.
“This Herculean effort epitomizes teamwork and is beyond impressive,” said ADT President and CEO Jim DeVries. “In an incredibly short time, people across all functional areas of ADT came together to make this happen. The result is better care for our employees and seamless service to our customers during this crisis.”
At the contact centers, an assembly line process of boxes of office equipment being loaded into cars prepared employees to work at home. Once home and online, employees were helping customers and colleagues within an hour.
“There are many perks like saving time and gas money driving to work,” said Tracy Peters, who transitioned from ADT’s Rochester, N.Y. Customer Care Center to home two weeks ago. “I like being in the comfort of my own home.”
Employed at ADT’s Customer Care Center in Irving, Texas since 2014, Custom Home Dispatcher Bridgett Patterson is happy helping customers from home. “When I speak with customers, they are so thankful that we are still there for them and haven’t disrupted service,” Patterson said.
Tina Mayewski has worked at ADT’s Operations Support Center in Rochester, N.Y. for 19 years. Since March 23, she has been doing her job from home.
“I do miss daily interactions with my colleagues, but I like the flexibility of working at home and being with my family,” Mayewski said.
To make this happen, ADT set up a war room and hotline, and staffed a task force comprised of dozens of employees who worked day and night. This task force:
- Encrypted, engineered, scripted and installed software in 5,100 laptops, allowing agents to function as though they were working at an ADT facility.
- Doubled the company’s VPN gateway to handle the exponential growth of remote users from 1,000 to 6,500.
- Upgraded internet circuit capacity by ten-fold.
- Updated sales and customer care processes/applications to ensure regulatory compliance.
“It’s a professional milestone for many of us in IT to be part of this historic transformation,” said Ibrahim Kassem, ADT SVP of IT. “But ultimately the greatest reward is knowing that our employees are safe at home while continuing to serve our customers.”
