A Syracuse company in its 26th year is expanding quickly as demand for its services increases all over the country.
Since the company was formed in 1992, Rapid Response has been selling peace of mind.
The core of its business, they say, is people, not equipment.
They’re the company behind other companies selling you security or medical monitoring.
“So they come out to your home or your business and they work on a fire system, security system, medical, we do those as well as environmental, GPS and video. Those are all different things we work on and they install it and they need a service provider,” said Rapid Response Marketing Manager Chris Denniston.
Calls from as close as Syracuse to as far as Canada and the Caribbean come in to the Rapid Response dispatch center, where some 80-plus people operate on a single shift.
“They’re sometimes stressed out or not really sure what’s going on or what they’re supposed to do and we at the other end of the phone are there to help them through that, explain what’s going on and give them their options, know everything is going to be okay as long as they give us the direction on what they want us to do,” said Rapid Response Operations Manager Jonathan Rainbow.
Security is a top priority for Rapid Response itself, with such sensitive data.
“We’re protecting life and property, that’s our day to day here,” Denniston said.
Redundancy is important for a business like Rapid Response – and the company has four Jeep-sized generators on hand to make sure their power is never out.
“So you can never have a time when you’re down. It’s not like a utility provider that has the ability to have downtime to work on issues and repair them. If we have downtime there could be lives lost, so when it comes to a natural disaster you want to avoid those at all costs. You’re right, we don’t have earthquakes here, we don’t have tornados in Syracuse. We have some snow and we know how to handle it and that makes us successful,” Denniston said.
The company’s founders picked Syracuse to start their company because of its weather, and because of the talent pool in the area.
“You can take a medical unit anywhere you go whether it’s the bank, the grocery store and if there’s a problem you press a button and our specialists upstairs will get the alarm and they also have a portal. This portal will show them exactly where you are and they’ll be able to pinpoint where we would need to send assistance if there actually is a problem,” Rainbow said.
Rapid Response is in the midst of a major expansion – nearly doubling its space.
In the past 10 years, the company has grown from servicing 900 companies with 300,000 subscribers to 1,700 companies and over 1 million customers.
The company employs about 500 people in the Syracuse area – and plans to add 70 more once it expands.
They also employs about 50 in Corona, California at a facility they opened about a year and a half ago.
