Fault finding ... on you!

One thing about going out meeting installers in their own environment is that you see different ways of doing things and you pick up new ideas. Equally, getting your company inspected is probably the finest way to find your faults and failings and gives you an opportunity to get them sorted. You can then improve your company, increase your efficiency and make more money, or not lose as much. So here's a mixed bag of popular failings that a small company has to get right.

The first is getting the phone answered properly, and it is still a major problem for small companies starting out. The nature of the business is such that you cannot be in two places at the same time, answering the phone and out doing the work, but there are things you CAN do. Don't switch the answering machine off when you are in – set it to more rings so that you can grab the phone before the answering machine cuts in. It also means that you cannot forget to switch it back on when you go out. The amount of new work lost by companies forgetting to switch on the answering machine must be enormous.

The number of times I try to ring a tradesman and get a phone ringing and no answer is still ludicrously high. I haven't got the patience to mess about, I just take my business elsewhere.

Then there is directory enquiries. Here's a scenario – the phone rings non-stop, no answer. I ring the directory enquiries to check the number – "We have no listing for that company". Next we try his own name and address – "This number is unavailable", which means that he is ex-directory. How do you intend to sell systems when the customer cannot get hold of you? This is particularly pertinent now BT directory enquiries has been blasted into obscurity and we now have a free-for-all of new directory services, there are bound to be mistakes and omissions, you ought to check your number ASAP with all the new directory services.

   The next biggest problem is the time it takes people to ring back if you leave a message. My record is three weeks – "I was on holiday" was the excuse. If I was a customer I would have been long gone. As a representative of the inspectorate you want to join, I have just discovered your first failing before I have even spoken to you. It gives me the first impression that you are either slackly set up or don't care. First impressions count . I most often find that it is not a case of "I don't give a sod" it is more like "I didn't realise". This is the classic case of an inspectorate proving its value to you by spotting your problems before they have even got across the doorstep.

Getting a signature is another old chestnut. It is imperative that we all get signatures for the work we do or we leave ourselves liable to not getting paid. But do we get that signature? NO. We have a blind faith in the customer. We regularly go in and fit an entire system on a verbal say-so and take a risk on getting paid. Here is a true story … A house got broken into and the crime prevention officer advised an alarm system. The parents were on holiday so the teenage daughter was panicked into buying a system and it was all fitted on a nod and a wink before they got home. The first thing Dad saw was an opportunity not to pay and told the installer he had no right to fit the system without asking him first and he was not going to pay. He wouldn't let the installer into the house to get his equipment back because of the damage done installing it and Dad was threatening to sue for that damage.

The installer lost the system, the time and his temper. Had he got the daughter to sign for it the installer could have gone to the court and got his money plus expenses (which I am sure would have covered the survey time as well). So, get a signature for everything, even if it is a no-charge job – it pays in the long run. This leads us to the concept of a paper-free office. I know that the idea of an office run entirely by computer has appealed to many installers but there are many problems to overcome and the first is, how do you store the customer's signature?

You could get a sheet signed in the normal way and then scan it into the computer but would this stand up in court? It is one of those situations where we have to wait for a court case to make a ruling, and none of us wants to be the guinea pig. Look at what we DO know. If you buy a car on credit you always have to sign and we are never given the original back, only the copies.

Make sure you get a signature on everything … even if it’s a no-charge job

Can we assume that there is some reason why the copy is not legal in court? I think we should assume so. Furthermore let us assume that there are legal reasons for who gets the original signature in all our dealings.

Let's think that the signature is the seal on an agreement. We give the customer a signed original (we keep the copies) of any completion certificates we issue. This is the installer giving a signed statement that the system is completed and complies with whatever standard it is supposed to. The customer signs the handover sheet as a written agreement that they have seen, received, have been trained in, or agree with whatever is on the sheet so we get the original and they get the copy. So why do so many installers give the original job sheet back to the customer? They may be giving away their legal right to payment.

Now how do we get a paper free office when the customer has to sign every time? We could get the job sheet signed and then scan it but what have we saved? We have still had to fill in the sheet and get it signed. We may as well just bung it in the customer file and forget it. There may be one alternative, and that is to fill in all documentation on a laptop, then issue each engineer with a log book so that he can fill in a page with details like job number and date and get the customer to sign against that. But then we ask "What have we saved", the answer is "not a lot" because at some point we are going to have to print a copy and give it to the customer.

Looking from the other side, we still have to issue a multitude of certificates, forms and dockets to the customer so we still have to produce paper for them no matter how much we manage to lose in the office. This is a situation that is going to go round and round without answer for some time yet.

Some national delivery services have now issued their drivers with an electronic box that will take an electronic signature. Very futuristic, but how will it stand up in court, and how do we know that they are not going to add our signature to a whole variety of other legally binding documents that we have never seen? Now a technical problem concerning end of line resistors in roller shutter door contacts. Due to the nature of the RS contacts, the end of line resistor cannot be put at the true end of the line, it has to go in the next best place – the junction box at the end of the armoured cable. So some installers are leaving the tamper circuit within the armoured cable off the RS contact E.O.L. circuit. Inadvertently, they are leaving the part of the circuit that is most vulnerable (the part from the junction box to the contact) wide open to accidental short circuit. There is a way of wiring that is easy to complete and will convert an end of line circuit back to a four wire anti short circuit loop that will give the required protection (see my illustration on previous page).

In the past I have installed RS contacts and had them badly damaged by heavy objects being parked on the armoured cable. The effect is to severely nip the flexible metal outer and the internal cables together and short-circuit the wires. With a normal four-wire circuit this would cause a tamper fault and the alarm would be unsettable until repaired. Current common practice with end of line is to put the resistors in the junction box and discard the tamper pair on the contact. When wired this way any short circuit damage to the RS contact cable is undetectable and will render the contact useless. The obvious upshot is that any break-in to that particular door renders the alarm company liable for not wiring it correctly in accordance with the standard.