Attrition Project

Table of Contents

• What is the Attrition Project?
• How can I participate?
• What are the latest findings?
• Attrition Powerpoint Presentation

What is the Attrition Project?

According to John Brady, President of TRG Associates, customer retention continues to be the single largest management challenge faced by companies in the alarm industry. While the industry has gradually developed specific performance parameters such as market size or growth dynamics, Brady points out that an "industry measurement, critical to measuring value created and value lost, that is not well maintained or commonly defined, is the qualitative and quantitative measurement of customer attrition."

For this reason, the Education Committee of the Central Station Alarm Association (CSAA) and TRG Associates have partnered to develop an attrition standard. This standard will define what attrition is, how to measure it, its intrinsic cost and how to reduce or limit that basic measurement of "poor service." The goal is to gain some consensus both on the definition and its utilization within the security industry.

The CSAA/TRG Attrition Project was introduced to attendees of the 2001 CSAA NAMTSE meeting in Tucson. During the current phase of the project, TRG is collecting attrition information from different alarm companies, both large and small, and analyzing and consolidating the information to develop an industry-wide attrition standard. Just recently, the results for 2006 have been published. The study has accumulated results for five consecutive years and it is working to gather the 2007 results at this time.

How can I participate?

• Paper: http://www.csaaul.org/FinalAttrition.pdf 

• Spreadsheet: http://www.csaaul.org/AttritionCalculation.pdf 
  Please e-mail communications@csaaul.org if you would like to receive the MS Excel version.

CSAA and TRG would like to extend an invitation to all alarm companies in the industry to participate in this worthwhile project. 

TRG presents updates of this project at each CSAA Meeting for attendees to compare their company's results with the standard. The next update will take place at the 2008 CSAA Annual Meeting in the Grand Cayman Islands in October.

How Can You Participate?

• If you decide to participate, contact communications@csaaul.org or jbrady@trgassociates.com to receive the attrition calculation worksheet. 
• Instructions for completing the template are included on the first tab of the worksheet.

• Review the Cancellation Reason codes included in the instructions. If you should have any question as to the Cancellation Reason categories, or would like to expand or replace the categories to better fit your company, please contact John Brady at TRG Associates at 860-395-0548 or by email at jbrady@trgassociates.com. TRG will customize your Cancellation Reason categories, and provide you with a new template.
• Please complete your template each month and forward it via email to TRG at jbrady@trgassociates.com where your results will be reviewed for any extraordinary trends. TRG will call to discuss any trend concerns at no cost to your company.
• In addition, your monthly results will be catalogued with other participants and categorized in accordance with the various company characteristics (e.g. size, geography, etc.).
• Each calendar quarter, TRG will publish the updated results of the Attrition Projects to all participants. Your results will be kept confidential and not be made available to anyone, nor will your company be identified as a participant.

If you should have any additional questions related to this project, or the Attrition template, please do not hesitate to call TRG Associates directly at 860-395-0548 or visit www.trgassociates.com.

Participation in this study is at no cost and we maintain the strictest of confidence as to the individual company results.

Please do not hesitate to call John Brady at TRG Associates (jbrady@trgassociates.com) or Celia Besore at CSAA (communications@csaaul.org) for information on how to participate in the study.