SUMMER GARDNER
Real Estate Exec: Signature Alert Security

The most satisfying occupations often involve helping people. Teachers, for instance, find joy the moment a struggling student finally understands a difficult concept. Real Estate agents take pride in watching a family fall in love with a home. Similarly, security system executives take satisfaction in knowing that they provide their clients with restful nights and peace of mind.

Summer Gardner owns the Las Vegas office of Signature Alert Security. She moved to Las Vegas with her husband Brad in 1999. Unlike many couples who visit Las Vegas, get married and then leave the city, Summer and Brad turned the Las Vegas marriage tradition on its head: they moved to the city on the day after their wedding.

“We love it here,” Summer says of Las Vegas. She contrasts the surreal entertainment of Las Vegas to the small Utah town of her childhood. “Pretty much everything goes here. You can be from any walk of life… Everybody can be free to be themselves.”

The couple also loves the economic vitality of the city—the job growth, the ever-increasing population, and the variety of businesses that are open 24 hours.

When they moved to Las Vegas, Summer and Brad found enjoyable jobs, Summer in a furniture store and Brad in restoration. In 2004, however, she found an opportunity to create her own business. Her brother, a franchisor of Signature Alert in Salt Lake City, offered to sell her a Signature Alert franchise in Las Vegas.

Summer knew that starting a business would be a risk. “We were nervous at first,” she says, “but we knew if we saw someone [else] driving a Signature Alert truck around town, we’d regret it.” Summer and Brad decided to take the risk. Summer quit her job and founded the company and she now considers that choice to be the best decision of her professional career.

Signature Alert provides both traditional hard-wired and complete wireless systems to homes and buildings. The company can install its traditional system during a building’s construction phase, but because it is extremely difficult to wire a system after construction is complete, the company provides wireless systems to existing homes and buildings. Summer holds the utmost confidence in wireless systems; she uses one to protect her own home.

The company’s services include protection from burglary and intrusion. In addition, Signature Alert offers smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors and flood detectors.

Summer says that Signature Alert offers the customer service advantages of a small business while providing the lockdown protection of a nationwide company. More than 75 percent of the company’s 300-plus clients are referrals, which speaks to the high level of customer satisfaction.

Three quarters of Signature Alert’s clients are residential. Some clients ordered the service during construction, some at move-in, and some after a burglary. Signature Alert also services many contracts for commercial spaces in strip malls, office complexes and restaurants.

Summer ensures customer satisfaction by visiting every home or building during the bidding phase of the transaction. She personally examines the perimeter for vulnerable places.

After the sale, Summer keeps in contact with her clients. Unlike many competing security companies, who sometimes make their customers sign contracts but then sell those contracts to third parties in order to make a quick profit, Signature Alert keeps and services all of its accounts. “We’ve never sold any of our accounts,” says Summer. “That way, we have to continue to earn our customers’ business.”

Summer earns business by keeping her customers under the protection of the best monitoring station available. When a break-in is detected in a customer’s home or building, the monitoring station calls the customer to determine whether the alarm was triggered by accident. If the triggering wasn’t an accident, then the station dispatches the appropriate authorities.

Signature Alert’s monitoring station boasts the fastest audited response time in the nation. The station can maintain such a record because its phone operators are background-checked in addition to being paid well and treated well. Employees take frequent breaks and earn fair amounts of vacation time. “It completely makes a difference,” says Summer. “[The station’s employees] are motivated… at the top of their game, and are prepared to deal with panic.” In order to handle the severest circumstances with military-like precision, the monitoring station only allows experienced operators to handle high-priority calls.

Signature Alert keeps a month-to-month agreement with its monitoring station. Just as Summer must work continuously to keep her clients’ confidence, the monitoring station must also work continuously to keep Signature Alert’s confidence.

The monitoring station has impressed Summer greatly. The station meets the stringent requirements for Underwriters Laboratories (UL) certification. UL works closely with the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to provide third-party standards for security devices and other critical systems.

In accordance with UL standards, Summer’s monitoring station has no windows on the first floor, it has backup generators, locks on both sides of its doors, and redundant phone lines, among other features. In addition, the station has two fully functional satellite locations that can immediately assume operations if the central station succumbs to a catastrophe. The station employs live operators around the clock during every day of the year, and never resorts to an automated answering system.

Summer says that her monitoring station has yet another advantage: its location. The central station is in New Jersey, thousands of miles from Las Vegas. The backup stations are in Arizona and Texas. According to Summer, using a faraway monitoring station adds another layer of security by minimizing the potential for disgruntled station employees to communicate with local criminals.

The quality of Signature Alert’s monitoring station can only be matched by the competitiveness of it pricing structure. Security monitoring services start at $24.95 per month, with complete installations starting at $199. Although clients tend to save money in the long run by paying for installations upfront, Summer understands that some customers would rather have free installation with a premium added to the monthly rate. Free installation packages are available for such clients.

For his part, Brad is a project manager at a restoration company. His projects range in scope from touch-ups to the complete rebuilding of homes and other structures. His company repairs and restores buildings and houses after fires, floods, mold and other unfortunate circumstances. His construction expertise is a valuable asset to Signature Alert. Not only does he install some of the systems, but he also works closely with his restoration clients who may be in need of security systems.

Summer and Brad have lived in Las Vegas since their marriage in 1999. They live with their two dogs—a boxer named Ali and a fuzzy lapdog named Ozzy—and they intend to be here for a long time to come. Summer and Brad love Las Vegas. They have made a lifelong commitment to take care of Signature Alert’s customers and to help the growth of their favorite city.

Summer Gardner can be reached at (702) 457-2537.

Photography: Britt Pierson