Many CCTV systems have scheduled maintenance contracts in place, offering the extra peace-of-mind that your customers’ premises, assets, and staff are protected. But are scheduled CCTV maintenance visits leaving end-users at risk?
Last year, we conducted a survey of 300 CCTV installations, most of which had scheduled maintenance in place, and found that 75% of these installations had one or more issue which affected operational performance, this was something as simple as the time not being set correctly, to camera and hard disk faults, and even systems not recording at all.
The reality is that a maintenance contracts with two site visits a year only guarantees that a system is working correctly 2 days out of 365 – only on the days the site visits occur.
Scheduled maintenance does not pick up any issues between visits, so your customers could have gaps in their security provision for up to 6 months if a fault or issue occurs between maintenance visits.
End-users often don’t have the time, motivation, or training to ensure their CCTV systems are operating correctly. I recently spoke to a Security Manager for a large food retail chain who is responsible for the security of around 200 high street stores, and last year they had 30 instances of critical footage being unavailable due to discovering an on-site issue when they attempted to review it.
It could be argued that your customers can get added protection by opting for your 4, 8, or 24-hour service response time to reduce the downtime of faulty CCTV systems, but the response time is often measured only from the time your customer detects and reports the fault to you, if it’s detected at all. In many cases, end-users simply do not notice faults until they try and play back some recorded footage, by that time it is too late, and the finger of blame is pointed at the maintenance provider.
Many of our customers are using CheckMyCCTV to provide a proactive maintenance monitoring service to their customers, which means that on top of a single maintenance visit, additional visits are only conducted when a fault is discovered by the software, ensuring that issues are dealt with quickly and efficiently.
A CCTV installer using CheckMyCCTV to provide proactive maintenance monitoring for 600 retail locations is saving over 30% of their maintenance budget by reducing the man-hours and travel costs associated with maintaining a large quantity of sites, and still deliver a higher quality service.
CCTV systems need to be maintained to help continue operation over time, and we recommend that a maintenance visit is undertaken at least once a year, but by supplementing visits with 24/7 Status and Operation monitoring using CheckMyCCTV, you can ensure your customers are not left with worrying gaps in their security provision between visits, keeping your your CCTV installations and your reputation remains in good health.
To find out more about how you can improve your maintenance contracts using CheckMyCCTV, contact us on +44 (0) 161 870 6137 or email us at info@nullcheckmysystems.com