customer service representative

monitoring specialist

bilingual customer service associate

service dispatcher

engineering team leader

AvantGuard Monitoring Centers

I would say the company, or at least HR and most members of management, are as nice as they can be and do want to help and work with your schedule, but stay away if you cannot handle high-stress situations and constantly being at a computer for up to 8 hours a day. I would also stay away if you don't want a customer service job/call center job, because despite what they say, this is what it is. It's not outbound calls, necessarily, but it is a call-center that is open 24/7 to keep an eye on multiple security alarm systems for MANY companies.

First two weeks of training seemed scary at first, but coaches and managers are extremely friendly and helpful as you learn. You have to pass a test before you work in the main work area. However, jumping into the real job, you will get rude subscribers and people mad at you for checking in on their alarm system, you will get people in a panic that will not want to listen to you, you will get slammed with alarms with no room to breathe or have time to pause, and sometimes have to wait just for a bathroom break. There is also hardly any room to make mistakes. Breaks are only 10 minutes which is not enough to recover from some parts of your shift. Also, not even after 90 days and just when I was getting used to my routine, they pushed me to do training on a new set of alarms, and things felt way too fast-paced for me and wish they gave me more time to get used to the job. There are days where they push the whole "saving people's lives" mantra, but I did not feel that at this job. It felt artificial to push that message onto workers. I could not see myself advance in this job. Despite the emphasis on being a team and most people there are super friendly and helpful, you don't really interact with your colleagues very much due to the high-paced environment.

Also, people will ask you to cover shifts CONSTANTLY. Also, shifts scheduled are not consistent. I was hoping this job would be a set schedule each week, but you can go from working 10 hours a week to 30 the next if you're part-time. You can be off for three days or work for the entire five days of the week.

I can say on a positive note that it pays very well and I can see this being a great job to keep while at college if you're a college student. You do get very in-depth training and a coach you speak with every week on what you're doing well in and what you can improve on. The break room's awesome and has snacks and free coffee.

This is definitely not a job you want to make into a career, and would only recommend as a short gig, as I said, would be a great spot for a college student while in school. People that work here have stayed here for years, but I could not see myself growing with the company. You definitely need to have a very outgoing personality for this job.

So when I first started here, I enjoyed it. There was a lot of promise to move up, they seemed very flexible and understanding about personal troubles, and they said they were behind you 100 percent. Well, as my time went on I found that to be very far from the truth. There’s a lot of lip service but very little pay off. 

If you have a family emergency and can’t make it they will write you up. If you have a problem with management and try to discuss it they will retaliate and management will gang up on you and try to give an “occurrence” for anything they can and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There is a cultural of favoritism here. Some people are given leeway for things like being over 10 minutes late to their shift, while others are punished for only being one minute late. Some people are given a “warning” for many failures of policy, while others are threatened with termination. 

They are very retaliatory and dare I say, a little petty. I’ve talked with many former employees that did not have flattering things to say about management as they did their exit interview, and they were trashed to other prospective employers, hurting their chances at getting employment after they work here.

The job itself is rewarding in that your helping people, but the standards are so high and low that you are stressed all the time because you never know if your coach and management will try a “gotcha”. It feels like their boot is consistently on your neck, and when you try to explain yourself and advocate for yourself, you are immediately shut down. While higher ups tell you to come to them and tell them if you’re having trouble, they brush you off as though they are too busy to deal with you.

Now this isn’t all of the coaches. There are a few that absolutely go out of their way to help, but they are, unfortunately, too limited by management and higher ups. 

Reading the reviews of similar sentiments break my heart because the job is not easy. You’re dealing with people dying, angry families that want you to fix their devices, dispatch that is numb to the chaos and talk down to you, and on top of that, higher ups act like they couldn’t care less about your mental health. Then act superior when it gets hard for people, and even belittle and talk down to “underlings”.

A typical shift was almost entirely taking calls or alarms from subscribers. Many of those calls--especially the alarms--were stressful situations, and even some of the more mundane calls involved dealing with people who were frustrated or upset. Luckily, they had a system in place for getting support to employees who needed help on a call, so even in the worst case scenario a call would simply be transferred to an operator who was better qualified. If you still needed a minute to catch your breath, that was usually fine so long as you let somebody know. The work itself isn't for everyone, but I always got the impression the company was doing what they could to minimize the stress.

There was a fair amount of learning on the job, which often made me wish the training had been more in-depth. Still, I knew they were desperate to get new employees and put them to work, and the support system was usually enough to make up the difference. The management was a massive help there!

For me, the biggest downside by far was the policy on sick days. If you caught a cold or had a sore throat (something that doesn't make taking phone calls all day easy!) you were still required to come in to work, or else you'd get an attendance violation on your record. The rule made sense, because if no one shows up to work then there will be no one to send an ambulance to a subscriber in an emergency. But it was still frustrating, because it made recovering from an illness that much harder. That being said, whenever I had to work while sick, I was usually able to stay in a separate room, so at least there was a lower risk of also getting my coworkers sick.

On the other hand, those same coworkers were my favorite part of the job! The culture of support and fun made the stressful moments worth it. I met some amazing people who taught me a lot about being patient and understanding, and everyone made an effort to help each other laugh and get the emotional help we needed in the stressful moments.

I worked here for over three years and I loved it at the start. Eventually, it all fell apart. Admin stopped caring about employees and do/did not want to hear feedback on areas for improvement or things that would benefit employees or new hires. They have decided it's easier to fire people and have a high turnover rate than make actual improvements. 
The job is fast paced and not overtly complicated. You have a script for your calls which helps you most of the time. You are QA'ed up to 6 calls a week and earn points for each which result in write ups. Instead of learning what you did wrong, you start getting scared of losing your job. Additionally, the attendance policy is strict and non-forgiving. 
You do start at 12$/hour but good luck getting any other raises. It's nearly impossible to get out of central and even some promotions within central don't come with raises. You do get 0.50$ after a year if you can make it that long. 
If you're part time, you have to either work alternating weekends or always work a Sat or Sun. If you're full time, you choose between a Fri/Sat weekend, or a Sun/Mon. You have to request time off at least a month in advance but unless you request time off at least 3-6 months early, good luck getting any holidays off. The central station is 24/7 unfortunately. So "we care FIRST" if you're in admin. You'll have holidays off and plenty of free time. And if you're in central, at least you MIGHT get a free lunch for working on Christmas.  
You'll have a huge new break room if you work here but it's not like there is time to enjoy it. The people are generally nice but there's rarely time to talk to anyway because shifts are always understaffed and management doesn't care and doesn't do anything.

Avantguard has been an great experience for me. Nonetheless, it is a job, and it has it's good parts and bad parts. The good parts are the culture and the people. Avantguard makes a point to care for you as a person. They know that a job can be hard, but it is a job that needs to be done. They've made company parties, raffles, weekly activities, and so many other things to show that they value your service. You have weekly visits with a coach so that you can express how you're feeling at work, and feel heard. The coaches definitely do their best to help and serve you in whatever way they can. You are able to work from home! This comes after an amount of time working in the office, of course, so that you know what you're doing. They do incredible fundraisers and really try to give back to the community as well.
As far as the bad parts go, it is an alarm monitoring service, so it is open 24/7. As a result you are required to work every other, or every weekend, and on holidays. It's hard, but made easier because you can work from home. It is very boring work. You answer phone calls and dispatch the police in a continuous cycle, and there isn't that much of a break between calls.
In the end, the reason I stay is because of the people and the flexibility of work. I never have to stay in one place, and the people make it worth it. I've debated quitting several times but can't bring myself to it because the people make it worth it.

The days shift is understaffed, overworked, and heavily scrutinized. They coach out people that have issues with the way they run things and they don’t care about your actual mental health. They would rather buy a bunch of companies out and overwork their employees. Everybody is burnt out and instead of trying to help they just tell you to “think of all the people you’re helping!” when you can’t make rent and have your sanity at the same time. 

Time off is impossible and the tardy/call out policies are strict and unforgiving. If you have a chronic disability, do not work here, you’ll be punished for calling in sick and it’s impossible to get coverage. They’ll get mad if you ask for coverage too much too. You can’t go full time either. There’s a waitlist, and only 20% of employees are allowed to be full time.

Plus they’re taking away all their remote workers ability to work remote and instead are making them come into office, which would defeat the purpose of why a lot of people started working there in the first place. Underpaid, understaffed, overworked, and prepare to be gaslit because they’ll also say you aren’t working hard enough when you’re doing your best. And if you complain about the work conditions, they’ll start punishing you and doing random performance reviews and scrutinize you until you quit. 

Basically, only apply as a last resort.  Not worth it. 

I started to AG right after High School. They hired me with no prior experience and an unimpressive resume. I worked there for approximately 3 years and 8 months before being let go.  I would recommend this job to many of my friends even now. AG has a great environment, good people, and compensates their employees well ($.50 raises each year plus $100 referral bonus if someone you bring in stays for 90 days!)  The work isn't easy but for a college student in Rexburg it's also the best paying job you will get.  Management can be a little wonky at times but they do listen to feedback especially if you are just honest and approach them when something occurs.  The one downfall of AG in my mind is the fact that they are growing as a company so fast but are not necessarily hiring people at the same rate. Also, the chance to move up is not very big. I got very stuck in my position as a TM (team mentor) for more than 2 years which ended up leading to me being let go. I DO NOT recommend this job as a long-term job for anyone, it gets extremely monotonous and just plain stressful. I loved that I was able to help people here but I am also ready to be done with the place after almost 4 years of the same work.

AG is a great place to work with young adults with a large range of backgrounds, making it easy to make friends in the office. They offer great initial flexible scheduling that you can build around your school schedule, with great starting pay for the amount of work you do. However, once you make your schedule, it's stuck for 3 months so make sure you don't over do it. Easily can be burnt out for working more than 30 hours a week along with school, so try to find the balance between the two and its a great job to have. The Remote availability is great to have if you need to travel home for holidays or emergencies.

The leadership in office is incredible and look out for the operators in all aspects of work and life. They are fun to joke around with, and will listen to you if have questions and concerns. 

Being stuck to work on holidays and weekends can be rough, but as long as you make your availability not to high on those days make it easy to work those small shifts. Overall, as long as you know your limits on how you won't get burnt out, AG is a fun place to be and a great job to have.

The company is fairly new and the management is fairly disorganized. Long hours, monotonous, pays well for Rexburg, but you'er locked to a chair for 8 hours. Depending on shift length determines your breaks. To put it in perspective 5 hours gets you a 15 minute break. Typical call center job. The management is so messed up it seems that new decisions on procedure are being produced bi-weekly. Coaches (basically supervisors) offer "huddles" (meetings) every week...if they get to it. So that helpful procedure changing info may not get to you for a week or so. That and those same huddles are used for telling you about your QA ( performance stats). Which, might also be important to know. The SC's (shift coordinators) are great though. They should be getting paid the most and its strange why their pay is so close to a regular operators. They honestly are the operation managers of the center so it baffles me why a ops manager is really needed. The company is alright but if your not looking to do the same thing, day in and day out for hours on end and need human interaction. Steer clear.

Although it may seem like a repetitive job, there is always something that you can learn. AvantGuard also truly understands that your path in life may not be to stay with them forever, so coaches help you prep to succeed in life. When things do get too overwhelming, if you reach out to leadership they are willing to help out with hours and such. Coworkers are willing to help cover shifts if needed as long as you don't take advantage of that. There is also the ability to work remote so that working on a holiday shift (which they really try not to schedule you too long so that you can spend time with family and friends) is easier than coming into the office. Office moral is very important to leadership so there are parties, activities, competitions, and raffles to help boost the moral of the staff. I have recommended this job to every person I know looking for a job because of how much I love it here. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Customer service representative 3 salaries reported	$17.00 per hour
Monitoring specialist 2 salaries reported	$14.00 per hour
Bilingual customer service associate 3 salaries reported	$14.00 per hour
Service dispatcher 1 salary reported	$14.50 per hour
Engineering team leader 4 salaries reported	$16.00 per hour

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