At Netwatch, we like to give credit where credit is due, and that’s why we’re launching a blog series focused on highlighting the incredible capabilities of our team. Today, we are proud to feature one of our dedicated and expert intervention specialists, Alex Zamora. Alex is a dedicated security professional who has honed excellent skills during her time with our team. Over the past few years, her hard work has paid off, resulting in a promotion to Operations Manager. Below we take a closer look at what excites her about the industry and what matters most at the end of the day.
How did you become an intervention specialist at Netwatch?
In 2019, I began working at National Monitoring Center, where I started in the alarm room. Part of my job involved contract monitoring, and at that time, the contract monitoring team was testing video monitoring and rudimentary audio alarms. I was allowed to give a live audio warning over the intercom. My manager overheard me, which prompted him to tell me about Netwatch and swiftly convinced me to join. From there, I moved my way up!
What training is involved in becoming an intervention specialist?
Both NMC and Netwatch provide highly specialized training for their respective employees, but both have different roles. NMC trains alarm agents and Netwatch trains intervention specialists. For intervention specialists, most of our training involves learning to use a component of our purpose-built platform called CAMS. CAMS is the interface between the unit that sends the alarm and how we process the warnings that come in.
To this day, learning how to use the CAMS interface is the most significant part of the training we undergo. In addition to learning to use the software, our team undergoes training on delivering powerful audio warnings. We are constantly practicing how we provide our voice downs – working on the tone of our voice, the words we choose, clearly enunciating our words, and ensuring we deliver a compelling message. We record practice sessions and provide them to management, which provides additional feedback as a learning mechanism.
How does your background impact your position now?
My background working on a commission team gives me an advantage over traditional operators because I learned the ins and outs of getting a system set up correctly. Overall, it gives me a better understanding of camera placement, making it easier to gauge the distance of camera angles. That has provided me with a leg up in the field.
What do you think sets Netwatch apart from the competition?
We rise above other monitoring providers in three areas: our people, our platform, and our ability to deliver live audio warnings. We make significant investments in our team, have outstanding innovation, and select individuals passionate about driving change and making a difference when stopping crime.
The other key differentiator is how agile we are. We discover new ways to improve our systems and educate our customers and partners on how these new capabilities can help them. Having a purpose-built platform developed in-house by our incredible R&D team, we can quickly implement meaningful updates, which allows us, the intervention specialists, to do our jobs better, faster, and with greater purpose.
But the most important thing that sets us apart from the rest of the security industry is how we deliver our live, personalized audio warnings. We focus on providing professional yet stern voice-downs and use descriptive language to make it clear that we’re watching the intruders. We use varying levels of aggressiveness in our warnings depending on the situation: we are stern during everyday situations, but for break-ins and more severe violations, we give more aggressive signs that are appropriate for the problem. We truly customize our response to what is happening at any given moment. That is why we prevent crime.
What is the most rewarding part of your job?
For me, it’s whether we caught a bad guy or deterred one; it’s satisfying to know that we’re doing our jobs well and effectively, and most importantly, we are making a difference for our customers. Our team takes great pride in what we do, and when I’m walking through the alarm room and hear another operator giving a great audio warning, the passion and dedication our team shows in those moments instill a great sense of pride. For this reason, we have launched an internal award program to recognize and help motivate our team for their terrific work. We share our critical interventions internally on our social network and find that it excites the team as they know we make a difference daily for our customers by creating a fearless environment for them.
I genuinely believe we are making a difference every day. That’s why I am here.
