How to Train a Customer on Their Alarm System

Why this matters

Most false alarms in the first months of a new system come from the people who live with it, not the equipment: someone arms Away and stays inside, someone comes home and walks past the keypad, someone hears the siren and panics instead of entering a code, someone answers the central station's call and does not know the passcode. Each of those turns into a dispatch, and in many towns a fine on the customer's account, and a customer who blames the system. The training at handover is the cheapest false-alarm reduction the shop has. It works only if the customer does each thing themselves, at each keypad, while the tech watches, rather than being told how.

The panel's false-alarm reduction programming (exit errors, cancel windows, cross-zoning) is covered in False Alarm Reduction Features in the SIA CP-01 Standard, and how the central station verifies before dispatch is in Alarm Verification Methods: Calls, Video and Audio. This card is the time with the customer.

Before you start

Put the account on test. Training trips the alarm on purpose. The account goes on test with the central station before the first practice and comes off test only after a signal is confirmed received at the end (How to Put an Alarm Account on Test and Take It Off). A practice alarm on a live account is a real dispatch.

Warn about the siren. An interior siren at close range is loud enough to hurt: stand back from the sounder, keep children and pets in another room or out of the house for the minute it runs, and tell anyone nearby, including a neighbor who would otherwise call it in.

Have every household member who will use it present. Training one person and asking them to pass it on is how the teenager ends up arming Away with the dog inside.

Step 1: Let the customer set their own codes

Hand the keypad to the account holder and have them enter their master code and each household member's user code, with you looking away. Explain that each person gets their own code so the history shows who armed and disarmed. Separate from the keypad codes is the passcode: the word or phrase on file with the central station that proves to an operator on the phone that the person is authorized. Confirm they know which is which. The installer code stays with the shop under The Installer Code and Customer Passcode Handling SOP.

What breaks if you skip it: the tech knows the household's code, and the customer is told to change it "later," which never happens.

Step 2: Practice arming Away and Stay at every keypad

Away arms everything, including interior motion detectors, and is for when the house will be empty. Stay arms the doors and windows and leaves the interior motion off, for when people are home. Each person arms both modes at each keypad and leaves or stays as the mode means.

Why at every keypad: a garage-entry keypad is often a different model, angle or height from the front hall one, and the person who always comes in through the garage will meet that one at 6 pm with their hands full.

Step 3: Practice disarming inside the entry delay

Each person arms Away, leaves, comes back through the entry door and disarms within the entry delay. Tell them the number of seconds as programmed on their system (How to Program Entry and Exit Delays and Time Them covers setting it), and that the keypad beeps the whole time.

Step 4: Run a false alarm on purpose, then the call

With the account on test, each adult arms Away, comes back in, and does not disarm. The entry delay runs out, the siren sounds, and they enter their code to silence it. Then explain what would happen on a live account: the panel waits a short window before sending, and disarming inside that window sends nothing; disarming after it sends the alarm followed by a cancel; either way the station may call, and the right answer to that call is their name and their passcode.

The cancel call, practiced without an alarm. The account holder calls the central station's customer line, gives their name and passcode, and the operator confirms it matches what is on file. No alarm is involved in this call, so nothing can dispatch, and the customer has now actually said the passcode to an operator once.

Step 5: Walk through the call list and how verification works

Show them who the station calls, in what order, and what the shop's verification standard is before a dispatch (a call to the premises and a second call to the first contact is a common pattern). Ask whether the phone numbers on the list are the ones that will actually be answered. A call list carrying a landline that was cancelled last year is a dispatch the customer could have stopped.

Step 6: Explain the trouble beep

A trouble is not an alarm. The panel beeps and shows a trouble when something is wrong with the system itself: AC power lost, the backup battery low, the communicator unable to reach the station, a wireless sensor's battery low or not checking in, a tamper. The acknowledge key silences the beep; it does not fix the cause, and the trouble usually returns until the cause is fixed. The customer's job is to read the screen, silence it, and call the shop with what it says.

Step 7: The test reminder and who to call

Tell them how the shop wants periodic tests done (call the central station first to put the account on test, trip a sensor, confirm, take it off test), and leave a card at the main keypad with two numbers and what each is for: the central station for anything about an alarm, a cancel or a test; the shop for troubles, service and changes.

What it sounds like at the keypad

A household of two adults, Dana and Sam, and a 16-year-old, Jo. Keypads in the front hall and at the garage entry. Account on test, siren warning given, the dog in the yard.

TECH: Dana, arm it Away here, then go out the
      front door.
DANA: (enters code, presses Away) It's beeping.
TECH: That's the exit delay. You have until it
      stops. Go on out, then come back in.
DANA: (comes in) Beeping again.
TECH: Entry delay. Don't put your code in this
      time. Let it run.
      (siren sounds)
TECH: Now your code.
DANA: (enters code) It stopped.
TECH: We're on test, so nobody's coming. Live,
      a code that late could mean the station
      gets the alarm and a cancel, and calls.
      They'll ask for your passcode.
DANA: My four numbers?
TECH: No, the word you put on the form. Don't
      say it to me. You're going to say it to
      them in a minute, on their customer line.
DANA: And if it beeps at 3 am and the screen
      says trouble?
TECH: Read the screen. Press acknowledge to quiet
      it. Then call the number on this card in
      the morning and tell them what it said.

Dana then called the customer line and gave her name and passcode; the operator confirmed it was on file. Sam did the same. Jo, who will not be on the call list, practiced arming and disarming only.

The one that failed. At the garage keypad, Sam armed Stay instead of Away, left, and the system armed without the interior motion detectors. Asked what he had done, he said "armed it." The tech had him read the keypad screen, which said Stay, and explained the difference in terms of the house: Stay is for nights with everyone home, Away is for when the house is empty. Sam then armed Away correctly at the garage keypad twice, unprompted. Had it gone unnoticed, the house would have been left with its motion detectors off on weekday mornings for as long as Sam left last.

Finish test: they do it unaided

The training is complete when, without prompting:

• each person who will use the system arms Away and Stay and disarms at every keypad they will use, with the keypad screen confirming the mode;
• each adult on the call list has silenced a practice alarm with their code and given their passcode to a central station operator on the customer line;
• the account holder can say what a trouble beep means and who to call for it.

Record on the ticket who trained, which keypads, the result per person, and anything that needed reteaching (here: Sam, Stay versus Away, garage keypad, retaught and passed). Then take the account off test only after the central station confirms receiving a signal, and confirm with the customer that the system is now live.

What changes the training

An elderly customer or one who lives alone. Train with a family member present, write the two numbers and the steps in large print on the card, and schedule a short follow-up call a week later; the first week is when a forgotten step becomes a dispatch.

A small business. Each employee who opens or closes gets their own code and the same practice. The owner gets the call list conversation, including who is called at 2 am, since that person needs their own passcode.

A pet that stays home alone. Arming Away with a dog loose in the house works only if the motion detectors are rated by their maker for that animal and placed for it, which is the subject of Pet-Immune Motion Detectors and Where They Still Fail. If they are not, teach the arming mode that leaves the interior motion off when the dog is home, have each person practice choosing it, and write on the ticket which mode the household uses with the pet inside. The dog's first false alarm tends to come in the first week, while the owners are still learning which button to press.

A system with a phone app. Practice arming and disarming from the app too, and show where the app shows the system's status, since many customers will use the app more than the keypad.

References

• ANSI/SIA CP-01 False Alarm Reduction standard, for exit errors and cancel windows
• See related: False Alarm Reduction Features in the SIA CP-01 Standard
• See related: Alarm Verification Methods: Calls, Video and Audio
• See related: How to Put an Alarm Account on Test and Take It Off
• See related: The Installer Code and Customer Passcode Handling SOP