Criticom Monitoring Services (CMS) Announces New Standard Procedure For Environmental Alarms

On Friday, July 30, 2021, Alarm Grid's monitoring partner CMS announced that this week their standard procedure for handling environmental alarms will officially change. Going forward, environmental alarms will receive one call to each specified number, with a message left where possible.

In the past, it was CMS's standard procedure on environmental alarms to continue calling all available numbers on the customer's specified contact list until a responsible party was reached and had acknowledged the alarm. Processing of the alarm was not considered complete until the operator had contacted and spoken to the property owner, or one of their designees. CMS had reason to review this policy recently, and as a result the standard procedure has been modified.

Going forward, when an environmental alarm is received CMS representatives will attempt to contact all specified numbers on the call list one (1) time. When a contact on the call list can't be reached, if the representative has an opportunity to leave a message, they will. But at that point no further calls to that number are scheduled. The representative will go through the call list in this manner until all numbers specified for environmental alarms have been called with no one being reached and messages left where possible. At this point, processing of the environmental alarm is considered complete.

If the representative receives an answer, they will notify the answering party of the alarm and no further calls will be made. At that point alarm processing is considered complete. All of this information: numbers called, messages left or not, persons reached will be noted to the account. After one (1) call to each number with no one being reached and notations being made in the customer's account regarding messages left, the alarm will be considered finalized with no further action being taken by the CMS representative.

Environmental alarms may include such things as flood detection, and freeze detection. These types of alarms don't customarily require the dispatch of authorities, but a home or business owner usually wants to be notified about them as soon as possible to avoid costly property damage.

The monitoring stations's standard operating procedure for any alarm type will determine how that alarm type is treated in the absence of any other instructions. What this means is, if a customer wants an environmental alarm to be treated differently than what is described above, they can request an alternative procedure. As long as the request is within reason, CMS will gladly follow those instructions rather than their standard procedure. If a request cannot be honored, due to legal issues or company policy, CMS will explain why, and allow the customer to adjust the request until a suitable procedure is determined.