As a real estate owner or property manager, it’s your job to ensure that the elevator phones in your building call the right place in emergencies. The question is: What’s the best point of contact?
Elevator Phones That Call a Regular Office Line
If your elevator phones call an office telephone, you must ensure that the person answering the call:
- Can identify the building and elevator location immediately
- Understands the latest code requirements
- Knows how to handle calls properly
Poorly trained operators endanger the safety of elevator users and increase your liability exposure. Elevator inspectors often press the call button and remain silent to see how operators handle the situation. If they don’t know the elevator location or follow code requirements, you’ll fail the test and incur high re-inspection costs.
Elevator Phones That Call 911
Phones that call 911 can dispatch help 24/7 in an elevator emergency. However, they can’t contact maintenance or property managers in non-emergencies and may get you in trouble with the police.
Several 911 dispatch centers have requested that elevator phones not call them directly, as they don’t want non-urgent calls or pranks clogging up their lines and wasting time.
One scenario would be that if someone activated the call button and walked out of the elevator, on purpose or inadvertently, the 911 service would have to dispatch help. If first responders arrive on site for nothing, you’d likely get a hefty fine.
Elevator Phones That Call an Elevator Monitoring Company
Your best option is to program elevator phones to call an elevator monitoring service like ours at ELEVATE MONITORING.
As soon as the button is pressed, it dials our toll-free 24/7 line. The system automatically identifies the elevator and building location and displays the contact information. The caller would speak with one of our operators who have extensive technical and interpersonal training to handle both emergencies and routine calls.
Our elevator phone monitoring service meets the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) plus International Building Code (IBC) code requirements. The system combines:
- Voice communication
- Video camera for better visibility
- A two-way text response system for the hearing impaired
Elevator Phone Monitoring You Can Rely On
At ELEVATE MONITORING, we bring you the next step in the evolution of elevator emergency phones. We are UL-listed with trained, certified, and U.S.-based operators available 24/7. All our systems are fully ADA- and code-compliant.
Call us at 1-877-990-9191 to tell us about your needs and learn about our elevator phones.
