Choosing the right Security Company in Dallas can be hard. It’s not the type of shopping that most people are familiar with. It’s a service, not a product. And it’s a business few people have extensive familiarity with. And Dallas is a security market with numerous choices of companies of every variety. But if you boil it down to a few fundamental decision points you can make the right choice for you and your needs. We are not the right fit for every need. By comparing their company vs ours you will focus your needs, and determine whether ISG Patrol is the right fit for your needs.
Type of Service
The most important factor is to first determine what type of service you are looking to hire. Are you looking for a Security Guard Service, or a Security Patrol Service? We won’t address Special Event Security, Personal Protection Officers, Courier and Armored Car Services. We assume if you’re here you’re either looking for a Guard Service or a Patrol Service in Dallas Texas, or perhaps don’t know which of those you need. You can see an article about the difference here.
Don’t assume you need a standing guard service just because that’s what you thought you needed when you started thinking about finding someone. Think it through. A Security Patrol might better suit your needs. By comparing their company and type of business vs ours you may find that you can accomplish what works best for you. And you can save money.
A Lot or A Little
Size and Structure
There are security companies of all types and sizes in Dallas Texas. Some are franchises, some multinational global outfits, some are regional, some are mom and pop shops. But which type would work best for you? Are you going to provide security for a portfolio of 30 properties across 5 states? Do you need to be able to call in 25 additional hands for an event? Or is it more important for you to know the people who run your security? Is it more important that everyone working on your property actually knows the property and what is or isn’t normal there on a daily basis?
When you pick up the phone do you want an 800 number answered in a far off land, or do you want to communicate with the same person you’ve been talking to for 10 years? Do you absolutely have to have someone there during the day, or is it the overnight hours that are your concern?
Super-Sized or Super-Serviced
We may or may not be the best fit for you. If you need a large staff, or staff in outlying regions or cities, or staff to work during the day we are not your best bet. We are a highly focused niche service that does a highly focused type of service, and that’s all we do. But we do it better than anyone else in the business.
When you deal with another security company you deal with someone in the office answering a phone not the person who sold you the service. You’ve likely never seen or heard from that person again. You’ll eventually get someone who knows that your property exists. You’ll speak to them about the property. They’ll try to relate to what you’re telling them, which they will later pass on to an operations person who may have been to your property at some point. And they’ll pass on now third or fourth hand information to someone who will actually be at your property. Hopefully that person knows it but who likely has only been working there for a month or two and who is rotated among a list of many who work there from time to time.
It is very unlikely that any of the most senior executives in the company know your account exists. And it’s unlikely that the most senior employees at that office have ever been to your location once, if they even know it exists.
When you talk to us, no matter how large or small your account is, you’ll talk to the same person who you originally talked to when you hired us years ago. The one who knows everything about your property, who is at your property regularly, and who personally meets with the single other person who also works your property and has for many years. 95% of the time there are only two people who work your property, and they have for years. They regularly meet to talk about your property, no matter how small it is. You have one point of contact who knows you, knows your property, works it themselves, and can make decisions to fix issues.
When you compare their company vs ours you can easily see which suits your needs. It’s not always us. But if it is you’ll get the best service of anyone in the market.
Professionalism of Service
What are you looking to accomplish? Do you want someone to clean things up and make the property a better place? Or are you looking for a service of come out and “shake things up, kick butt, and take names”? You may think “Well I want the former, but I’m fine using the latter to get it done”. It may seem funny. But think it through. What do you want the service to say about you? You are hiring a company that will represent you.
You should want the job done effectively. Sit in court and explain why of all the companies at your disposal you chose to hire a company that billed itself as an aggressive outfit practically looking for conflict. That was YOUR choice, and now that someone’s been hurt on your property the jury wants to know why did you make that choice? Why was that what you were looking for and sought out? Is that unlikely? No. It happens.
Tactical or Tactful
You establish a tremendous amount of good faith (and defense to prosecution by the way) by hiring a security company to make things better at your property.
You are establishing that you care. And you’re doing what you can to make things better. But you throw it all away if it appears you chose an aggressive and reckless team to put there and pursue conflict rather than a professional and respectful team to get the job done. It’s hard to know what’s in peoples’ hearts and minds, but if you look at their advertising methods you can compare their company vs ours and see for yourself.
It is not just about image. It’s about what happens on your property. Over 25 years in Dallas we’ve seen too many aggressive wanna-be cops on the street getting themselves and everyone around them in trouble. And too many patrol companies are encouraging that behavior. We get the job done without being aggressive or inflammatory.
We are patient and respectful yet focused and persistent: professional.
It is not just the legal issues or even the cringe factor. Those may be the most obvious issues of hiring that kind of company. We work with police departments regularly and they absolutely cannot stand those companies or dealing with their employees. They do NOT see those patrol officers as like-minded compatriots. They see them as a menace and a nuisance that they loathe encountering. There will be as much conflict between those security officers and the police officers as there will between the security and the trespassers.
Compare their company vs ours and you will see one patrol company that’s likely to cause you problems, and one that will solve them for you.
Officers in Service
Most all security companies in Dallas hire from the lowest wage, least educated/trained, least motivated pool of employees in the market. Part of the reason is the economics of their business model. They have high overhead: high levels of non-billable costs.
When you’re running a Security Guard Service you have to have a large administrative staff to interview, process, hire, employ, manage, train, and supervise guards. You have to have a sales team to bring in new business. And you have to have enough office space to house all those people. What’s left is not a lot to pay the people who actually do the work. When you don’t pay you don’t get good employees. Employ those types of people and you need MORE office staff to process the turnover, and try to supervise the guards. And when you’re putting those people on your accounts you need MORE sales staff to survive the turnover in accounts. It’s a cycle.
Temp or Team
We don’t have any of that. ISG is a few people who work together as a team, each is a management level individual, each is invested in the business. We don’t often have turnover, in employees or accounts. There’s no sales staff. We keep our accounts. And we get new ones mainly through referrals.
We are in the security patrol business but we approach each of our properties in Dallas as a business owner or property manager. They are OUR properties, and we run them as we would want our properties run. Compare their company vs ours and you see one company who hires and endless string of the lowest level employees, and ours which works together as a team extending your management of your property.