Wilson Security: A Secure Choice

Wilson Security has an enviable reputation as one of the leaders in the security market; how important is that reputation when it comes to attracting and retaining clients, as well as providing a positive customer experience?

Firstly, thank you. We have worked hard to build a business that is trusted by our people, clients, and the communities in which we operate. Our valued clients include operators of Australia’s most high risk or sensitive locations to biggest brands with large scale requirements and leaders within their own markets. When a customer chooses to partner with Wilson Security, they enter a long-lasting relationship built on experience, responsiveness, and a companywide ethos to deliver enduring value.

Our financial stability and investment in a service offering underpinned by a greater focus on compliance, social purpose and corporate and environmental responsibility protects our people and reputation and ultimately delivers a positive customer experience for our clients. Our reputation as a market leader not only attracts and helps to retain a client base reflective of the type of businesses we want to work with, but also attracts the right kind of people we want delivering our service.  We recognize the work we have done to build this reputation indirectly effects our customers in a positive way and challenges the sector to think differently about how they look after their people.

How much of the focus at Wilson Security is on the customer?

Our customers are our priority and as one of our company values, every customer matters.

It is important to Wilson Security that our customers have an exceptional experience at every touch point throughout our business whether it be from an electronic interaction with our finance team, a phone call with our National Operations Centre after normal business hours or directly with the team delivering our service in the field. Our leadership encourages innovative and design thinking to deliver value add solutions tailored to the needs of our customer.

At Wilson Security, we believe a strong culture of customer service starts with our people on the frontline and as leaders, we know it is how we serve our people by being highly compliant and care for them, provide pathways to develop, encourage and engage with them will truly determine the level of service our people will deliver to our customers. All customer service excellence training programs developed in collaboration with the CSIA and made available to our employees start with a clear message from our CEO, Nick Frangoulis. Nick’s message outlines how important customer service is to our business and how important each team member is to ensuring we achieve excellent customer service outcomes for our customers.

Wilson Security has been delivering internal training programs through the CSIA Service Excellence Academy since 2018. How much have these programs helped shape the customer service that Wilson Security provides to clients?

 Customer Service Excellence training is a key element of our value proposition to retain and grow our client portfolio within many market sectors from corporate real estate and universities to Defense and hospitals.

We receive excellent feedback from our clients who have experienced this training within their contract, and we have a lot of interest from other clients to implement similar sector-based training and further enhance the customer service excellence of staff on their sites. The performance of our security team can have a direct impact on our clients ability to operate or compete with their peers and the service they provide can see an increases in customer advocacy, retention and growth

Through this program and other innovation initiatives encouraged throughout Wilson Security, we continue to build service excellence and trusted relationships with clients in the university sector.

What are the golden rules of providing customer service at Wilson Security?

Wilson Security directly employs 6,500 licensed security personnel to work on the frontline

daily across every state and territory in Australia. These essential workers are integral to keep

Australia safe and as such, our core business is to provide safety and security for our customers and this remains the primary purpose of any customer service focus at Wilson Security.

As part of the Wilson Security business, employees are guided by the company values of

integrity, innovation, leadership and most importantly, customer; all team members work hard to understand the needs of the people they serve and remain attentive to the service they provide with ongoing training and knowledge sharing. From management to frontline, the company has built a culture of exceptional customer service underpinned by an unwavering focus to protect the

client, people and property.

Wilson Security’s people first approach extends to every part of its operations. People first isn’t

just about the staff and colleagues, it’s about every interaction with people on the job. All staff

are encouraged to deliver a service which consistently meets the values and expectations of

clients, internal and external. It also changes the historical perception of the security guarding

industry to one which always puts the customer first.

How has the security industry changed since the company’s inception and how does Wilson Security stay ahead of the curve? 

We have evolved into an Integrated Security Solutions provider and this strategy encourages a new way of thinking at every level. We have created a culture in which our teams collaborate more closely across states, business units and sectors, to share learnings and innovative ways of injecting enduring value into the service we provide to our clients. By combining our security resource with an agile technology offer and using a risk-based approach that ensure global best practice, our teams are encouraged to think innovatively about how we can achieve the client’s objectives for service efficiency, better contract performance or improved security outcomes.

Our focus on delivering a highly compliant service is also a key differentiator with an industry first and union endorsed code of practice introduced this year. We are leading the way in terms of responding to the Australian markets increasing focus on corporate social responsibility, diversity and inclusion and Indigenous Engagement. Our investment in an award-winning Innovation Council and Key Account Management Framework is unparalleled in the market from a value proposition perspective.

The strength of our organization complemented by our integrated offer and ESG value proposition allows Wilson Security to maintain our market leading reputation and recognized brand in the industry as well as a preferred supplier for many current and future clients.

Wilson Security has previously won the Customer Service Leader of the Year Award at the CSIA awards. How important are such accolades for team morale?

It is immeasurable! From working together as a team to build a nomination and the associated review of the events the lead up to this point, to the shared experience of success against not only our security industry peers, but the entire Australian business community is incredibly exciting. In the case of our very own Andrew Kahlil winning this award – it was developed on the quiet and it was such an enjoyable process for his peers, clients, and management team to contribute to this for Andrew, then to see how humble he was about just being nominated to being the winner was great for everyone involved. Andrew is a leader in the corporate real estate sector and his passion for delivering an exceptional experience for his customer and their customer was already award winning to Wilson Security!

What makes Wilson Security’s team of frontline service professionals leaders in the industry?

Our employee value proposition is an important aspect of our staff retention in an industry that is quite transient in nature. Our attrition levels significantly outperform industry standards, and we have long standing employees who value working for Wilson Security and this builds IP in an industry that is critical. Training and development, how we care about our peoples safety, how they get paid and overall job satisfaction, the work we do with CSIA and technology advancements we bring to their day to day like virtual reality training or AI and video analytics means our people have unparalleled access to ways of working at Wilson Security and are considered best jn class because of this.

We work with CSIA to achieve our essential customer service goals giving our frontline staff, team leaders, customer facing and customer enabling managers support with best-practice know-how, international recognition, and practical support, all from a globally recognised service standard. And then we measure our success by testing ourselves against our peers with award nominations like the Australian Service Excellence Award, client managed award programs or innovation challenges, the Australian Security Industry Awards and Outstanding Security Performance Awards or by asking our clients via NPS and feedback surveys.

We make a point of operating with an agile mindset and respond to feedback with a continuous improvement philosophy as this allows us to constantly evolve the way we do things to better suit the needs of our clients. We share this feedback with our team and the market

 Wilson Security has been nominated for the Customer Service Project of the Year - Continuous Improvement at the 2022 Australian Service Excellence Awards. How much do such nominations mean to your personally, and the company as a whole?

I am proud of our business for allowing our national training coordinator, Brent and I to invest in developing the program like this. We believe this is nomination is a good testament of our investment and the support from the business to really make a difference in a sector which is so important to Wilson Security from corporate social responsibility point of view and the strategic direction of the business to support the communities we operate in. For us, the nomination is a qualification we are progressing in the right direction with our expanded employee journey through this project and also provides another opportunity to ask our clients for feedback and measure the change.

Anything else to add?

Grateful for our platinum parentship with CSIA and all the benefits it brings to Wilson Security. It provides us with a great network of customer service professionals who inspire us to continuously improve the way we manage our people and our service.