Defining Quality of Service – The Key Elements of Guarding Delivery

Do you purchase security? If so, how would you define quality of service? What do you think the key elements of guarding delivery should be and what does ‘value added’ look like from your perspective?

From the perspective of an ACS approved security provider, delivering a quality service in Security is essentially quite straight forward and comes under six categories:

• Deliver the service on time
• Keep clients informed if there is a problem with service delivery for any reason
• Regularly update Job specifications / Assignment Instructions
• Make sure you meet your KPIs
• Maintain regular communication / meetings with the clients
• Provide a full audit history and activity record to your clients, containing the information that they want to see and in a format that suits their requirements.

It might seem basic but these are the most common concerns that we hear from potential customers who are looking to switch providers. Unbelievably, it is still apparently common practice for providers to not actually deliver a service (be it a guard, or patrol visit or even responding to an alarm), but still actually charge the client as though they have received the service.

During negotiations with potential customers, we are frequently told that they are well aware that security don’t actually ‘turn up’ when they are supposed to, but still they receive invoices month after month. There are two scenarios at play here; either the provider does not know if the service is being delivered so it comes down to bad management, or the provider knows full well that the service is not being delivered but choses to invoice anyway which essentially is fraudulent.

Delivering added value becomes straight forward when you already meet the basics. If you maintain regular communication with a client then you learn about their business and the problems they are facing. It is easy to start incorporating small additions to job specifications to meet the clients’ needs. With a workflow management system that provides a full audit history, the client has all the data and statistics available in a format that they can use. Added value is simply utilising the full time that staff are at a site, filling their shift with useful duties.