Who has the worst customer service in America?
The answer to that is subjective and unscientific, of course, but whenever someone assembles such a clickbait list, you’ll notice something they often have in common: The greatest offenders are large companies.
That makes sense; big companies often focus on big customers, sometimes at the expense of smaller ones. And when you have hundreds of employees, turnover can be constant, forward-facing folks may lack training and experience, and accountability can suffer. Well-run smaller companies, conversely, may be more capable of personal relationships, nimble responses and attentive service.
Some take it as a point of distinction.
“We think customer support is something that distinguishes us from a lot of other vendors,” said Monica Laielli, director of operations for Enforsys, a New Jersey-based provider of software and services for first responders such as police and fire agencies and campus security.
“We answer the phone all day and most of the night because we have after-hours support, and a lot of customers have our cell numbers and know they can call us anytime. We don’t have a lot of bug calls per se, but we help our customers in tons of ways.”
That help can range from basic and straightforward – such as NIBRS scoring and resolving issues with New Jersey’s NJTR-1 crash reporting form – to the complex integration and movement and sharing of data between systems.
Here’s how Enforsys – which is expanding to campus police and safety departments nationally – helped several different clients in its home state with various issues.
The grass wasn’t greener
As neighbors on the Jersey Shore, the communities of Stafford Township and Barnegat are separate entities with their own governments and police departments, but they share police dispatch, which happens from Stafford’s 24-hour 911 dispatch center. For nearly two decades, Enforsys’ CAD/RMS solution powered that smoothly.
“Enforsys has a true multijurisdictional CAD, and from the dispatch perspective, that’s really what we need to handle both towns,” said Tim Cunningham, Stafford Township’s 911 coordinator. “It really helps us with that workflow.”
Chief Jim Haldenwang was on the department’s narcotics unit when it adopted the platform and found it simplified a lot of things.
“It was the first system we’d used that was really all-in-one,” said Haldenwang, who became chief in 2024. “Before that we had ragtag reports that were almost like Word documents you’d pull up, use a tab and type system, and then print out and bring to records for filing. To go from a system like that to a one-stop shop for all your reports made everybody feel like we’d finally come into the 2000s.”
Roughly six years ago, though, local leaders decided on a change. Stafford officers found it was a trade down. The new product worked, and the company behind it was supportive, but their new methods just weren’t comfortable. “The workflow just didn’t happen the way our telecommunicator team preferred,” Haldenwang said.
After five years of trying to make it work, the department returned to Enforsys. However, that meant all the intervening data had to be converted and moved back. That seemed easy enough – until the process started. “We quickly learned,” Cunningham said, “the transition would not be as simple as we’d anticipated.”
With the department facing a daunting labor challenge, Enforsys stepped in to help. Stafford leaders gave the bulk legacy data for both Stafford Township and Barnegat to the company in PDF form, and it provided the manpower and labor to cut and split the files, sorting and organizing them into associated cases in a format that could be viewed on the departments’ new/old platform. Much of that work had to be done manually, which took around five months. Enforsys also QA’d everything to ensure accuracy.
“Initially we’d thought a lot of that work was going to fall on us, but they really took on the brunt of it,” said Cunningham. “Once we exported that raw data to them, they really worked hard to get it converted into usable files for us.”
This wasn’t just a convenience; the documents were necessary for ongoing court cases.
“Had that data been lost or not converted, it really would have been egg on our faces with officers in court needing documents that just didn’t exist anymore,” said Haldenwang. “It really did take a lot of work, and they burned the midnight oil to do everything they had to do. They went above and beyond to make sure it was all resolved.”
‘The price and customer service are great’
Police in Carneys Point, on the Delaware River in the state’s southwest, also had an experience with an alternative that didn’t work out.
They first implemented Enforsys’ CAD/RMS solution around 15 years ago – right around the time Dale VanNamee joined the department. He became chief in 2021. “I’ve grown with them, and they’ve grown with me,” VanNamee said. “I think it’s a great system.” The company is also very knowledgeable and responsive to questions, he says.
But in 2024 Salem County implemented a different CAD system. After giving it a shot, Carneys Point leaders preferred to stick with Enforsys, but that required building a technical interface between the systems. The county estimated that would take two years.
Enforsys did it in a few months.
“The county paid for [the new system], so we tried it for a while,” VanNamee said. “In the end, the other system was very complex. Changes were hard to get implemented, and support didn’t always feel like a priority.”
That vendor eventually said the patch would be possible but quoted a significant price for it, and the timetable kept extending. In the interim, Carneys Point officers had to manually enter data from the Salem County system into their Enforsys system. That was time-consuming and susceptible to errors. Officers had to return to station repeatedly to enter call data. Keeping things ordered and sorted was difficult.
Now the interface built by Enforsys handles all that data sharing automatically, boosting efficiency and accuracy and making officers’ lives easier. Enforsys also submits the PD’s NIBRS data and is quick to help troubleshoot any issues that might arise.
“We just want things to be as quick and simple as possible, and the other system was just too much of a headache,” said VanNamee. “We get what we need from this system, and the price and customer service are great.”
Application gets the prosecution started
Beyond police departments, prosecutors’ offices play the next important role in bringing wrongdoers to justice. To do this, they need timely documentation and cooperation from officers and their PDs.
In Essex County, New Jersey, some departments were better at that than others. So Enforsys developed a web-based information-sharing and e-discovery application for the Essex County prosecutor’s office that lets their personnel proactively go and extract the files they need from police departments.
“It lets our users log in and get access to only the data they’re supposed to have access to,” said Hector Monteverde, the office’s IT director. “That allows us to get reports in a timely manner and start the criminal justice process at the prosecutor’s end.”
Implemented in the summer of 2025, this solution, based on a remote application server, replaced a thin client mechanism that didn’t always function as hoped. It links the office’s prosecutors and detectives to all Enforsys departments in the county.
Development was quick, and the learning curve was easy, Monteverde says.
“Enforsys was very helpful in developing a how-to document that not only made things easy for us in IT but was something our employees could make use of,” he said. “Once the application was installed, the look and feel were very much the same. But what made it even better is that it guarantees a connection, and the documents are all web-based and in the cloud. That really removed all the complexity and connection issues we’d have. It turned out to be a viable method and a good fix.”
Clearer view enhances campus safety
Another major client segment for Enforsys is colleges and universities, for whom it makes a cloud-based campus edition of its CAD/RMS. Like the main platform, it supports computer-aided dispatch and case and records management, but with tailored capabilities like the Clery campus crime data reporting required of educational institutions. Enforsys is also developing a user-centric smartphone app and an integrated portal to let campus departments query student record, dormitory and parking system data to cross-check with student and faculty records.
Around four years ago, campus police at Essex County College faced a need to upgrade from an old-school system that was making it hard to keep things organized and accessible and hampering the department’s ability to compile accurate data. “We’d have to go into various locations to find different things,” recalled Ron Parm, associate director and deputy chief of the campus police. “We needed to find a better way to do business.”
That fragmentation was particularly acute for Parm, who reviews all reports submitted by campus police and security, monitors pending cases in the CAD system and ensures everything gets addressed. This includes crimes, of course, but also smaller events like verbal altercations that require reporting. This feeds monthly activity reports intended to capture everything.
Parm and Chief Tony Cromartie began their search by asking around to other PDs and colleges. They quickly zeroed in on two possibilities, then narrowed to Enforsys. “We checked around to some other departments and asked them, ‘How do you feel Enforsys is benefiting you?’” Parm said. “Everybody gave us positive feedback.”
As the system was implemented, Enforsys sent personnel to conduct training, and some early minor data-entry hiccups were quickly resolved. Parm says the system now is fast and simple to use, with all categories easily accessed from the primary module.
“The only thing we had a problem with was identifying where some of the information was going for our monthly reports,” he said. “They showed us how to navigate it – we were hitting the wrong buttons and getting the wrong results. They’ve helped us resolve any issues and figure out what we could do to avoid any problems.”
The Enforsys product is also helping him keep on top of what’s pending. And with repeat offenders, histories are easily accessed along with names to ensure accurate views of who officers are dealing with.
Enforsys also provided cheat sheets to help personnel learn the system and has remained accessible for questions and assistance.
“It’s really taken us into the 21st century,” Parm said. “We were doing all this stuff manually that we could have been doing electronically. It was an eye-opening experience.”
‘That’s like second nature’
In New Jersey, Enforsys isn’t a new player. It’s spent 25 years developing solutions for “problems police actually have,” said Gerard Britton, the company’s CEO, with workflows and processes that have been field-tested and honed into efficient reliability.
That’s supplemented with a small company’s responsiveness, personal connection and willingness to collaborate.
“There are larger entities in the market, and they’re out there doing all kinds of things,” said Britton. “They have the CAD/RMS, they’re putting AI on top of it, they’re managing drones, all of that. We interface with those types of entities, but we’re not competing with them. Our focus and value to customers is that support, service and reliability. If you need somebody, we’re there. If you need additional training, we’re there. For us, that’s like second nature.”
For more information, visit Enforsys.
