Green issues are nothing new for CIA!
CIA have been choosing greener working practices for many years now and we’re always looking for new ways to reduce our carbon footprint. This is not only better for the environment, it benefits our customers. By improving efficiency, we can maintain our exemplary level of service whilst keeping our charges competitive.
Take, for instance, our company fleet. By equipping our 80 strong vehicles with TomTom satellite navigation systems, we provide precise routes to your door. Furthermore, we’ve installed driver monitoring facilities which improve the way our employees drive and encourage them to focus on smoother, more energy efficient driving. In real terms this, along with purchasing vehicles with eco-friendly engines, has improved our fuel efficiency by up to 33% and has saved around 28,680 Kg of CO2 being emitted into the environment. That’s enough to power about 600 freezers for a year!
Our sister company, Southern Monitoring Services Ltd (both the UK’s largest independent alarm receiving centre and remote video response centre), is green too.
As you can imagine, operating a monitoring centre 24/7/365 requires a great deal of electricity. Even the smallest change can make a remarkable difference and something as simple as introducing an energy efficient lighting solution has paid dividends in reducing the wattage used. However such a change doesn’t come cheap and a total of over four hundred T8 and T5 slim low consumption tubes, across the three floors was the price to pay but it does give an annual carbon saving of over 20,000 Kg!
Not forgetting the rain forests
Another focus for us to help the environment was to use less paper. We feel every department can make a difference, even before we install in a customer’s property. We send an e-brochure along with our appointment confirmation emails and quotes. In an instant, customers can literally ‘flick’ through it at their leisure, all the information they need to make an informed choice, store and re-visit the details at a touch of a button. This dramatically reduces the amount of literature used, avoids potential waste and ensures only the latest information and offers are presented.
A large percentage of customers now use our paperless billing facility which has been running successfully for over 3 years now and paying their invoices online using the easy-pay facility on our website.
And our latest e-booking facility for maintenance visits means we are sending e-mails out for appointments rather than a letter thus reducing the paper used.
The green savings are easy to see from this but there are unseen carbon savings that are gained. We are helping to reduce the impact with every postman’s visit we can save.
But it is not just the postman that doesn’t always have to visit. Heavy investment in technology has enabled us to resolve 1,200 service issues last year by using our remote diagnostics software rather than attending site. This not only saved time for the customer but also helped to reduce our CO2 output.
Similarly, by using our text reminder service, we have seen a 50% reduction in missed calls where the customer has forgotten we were attending.
This is our philosophy when it comes to being green: to make the difference when we can. And it won’t stop there. We are constantly researching all areas to take our green credentials further, helping us to become one of the greenest alarm companies in the industry. If there are any facilities mentioned that you are not already enjoying the benefits of, then why not get in touch and we will be happy to help in any way we can. And if you feel there are ways we could do even more, we would love to hear your ideas.
