Cookie Preference Centre

Your Privacy
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Performance Cookies
Functional Cookies
Targeting Cookies

Your Privacy

When you visit any web site, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. This information might be about you, your preferences, your device or used to make the site work as you expect it to. The information does not usually identify you directly, but it can give you a more personalized web experience. You can choose not to allow some types of cookies. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings. However, you should know that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on the site and the services we are able to offer.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site may not work then.

Cookies used

ContactCenterWorld.com

Performance Cookies

These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources, so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies, we will not know when you have visited our site.

Cookies used

Google Analytics

Functional Cookies

These cookies allow the provision of enhance functionality and personalization, such as videos and live chats. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies, then some or all of these functionalities may not function properly.

Cookies used

Twitter

Facebook

LinkedIn

Targeting Cookies

These cookies are set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant ads on other sites. They work by uniquely identifying your browser and device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will not experience our targeted advertising across different websites.

Cookies used

LinkedIn

This site uses cookies and other tracking technologies to assist with navigation and your ability to provide feedback, analyse your use of our products and services, assist with our promotional and marketing efforts, and provide content from third parties

OK
[HIDE]

Here are some suggested Connections for you! - Log in to start networking.

EXECUTIVE MEMBER
Ikhwal Sidiq
Assistant Manager Trade and Remittance Services
408
MEMBER
R. Aju Eko Suprati
Ketua Subkelompok Program dan Anggaran
0
MEMBER
Firas Kurdi
Customer Service Director
0
MEMBER
Vijay s
Director
55

Article : How Your Contact Center Can Survive Disasters

Disasters can happen at any time, any place. As contact centers become more critical in organizations, it is vital that you take steps to protect these operations and the services- customer care, help desk and sales- the centers provide.

Ensuring The Basics
The first step is ensuring the survival of your people and assets in an emergency. Contact centers have certain characteristics that require special attention. 

For example, there are many more employees for a given area than in other businesses -- 6 or 7 workers per 1,000 square feet -- compared with 4 workers in an office. This means you have many more people to evacuate in a given period of time.

Contact centers also handle considerable volumes of confidential data. This information needs to be saved, shifted off site and secured quickly in an emergency.

Here are the best tips to protect your contact center:

  • Harden your center to prevent or minimize the impact of disasters by eliminating or working around potential points of failure. These include hot water tanks above computer rooms and generators and switches located in basements.
     

  • Monitor and crack down on potentially deadly careless practices like blocking emergency exits and smoking outside of prescribed areas. Dismiss any employee found committing those acts.
     

  • Check and update your emergency plans. Take every precaution, such as fresh batteries in flashlights, generators have been tested and, most importantly, drill your employees on evacuation procedures.

    This last point is critical: You need to clear your staff in the same amount of time as any other building tenant with the same size of space. Disasters wait for no one.
     

  • Should your procedure call for your contact centers to ride out emergencies, equip them with bottled water and high-protein/energy foods like granola bars. Water lines may be broken; also, treatment may have stopped, making water potentially unsafe to drink. It may take many hours after a disaster has struck before conditions permit you to leave the premises.
     

  • Maintain an accurate list of who is present in your contact centers. Otherwise, life-endangering chaos can ensue in disaster as individuals and emergency personnel fruitlessly search for people who are actually not there.
     

  • If a contact center is forced to close, contact all employees immediately, especially those who are scheduled to come in, to avoid having them trapped in the ensuing chaos.
     

  • Check if your connections have enough bandwidth to move high volumes of information off your premises quickly. Your data should be sent to a secure location in another community that will not be affected by the same disasters.
     

  • Equip your contact center with battery-powered uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs). UPS systems enable sites to ride out brief power outages; they also permit orderly shut down and data backup should your facilities be forced to close.
     

  • If you have generators, always have them hooked into UPS systems to eliminate power fluctuations that can damage computers.
     

  • When severe weather threatens, designate employees to monitor the National Weather Service on battery-powered radios. Have them pay attention to the possibility of flash floods and tornadoes. If a tornado warning is issued, move employees to your building's designated safety area; if there isn't one, have your staff take shelter in an interior hallway on a lower floor, closet or small room and away from windows.
     

  • When the alarm sounds or evacuation orders are given, don't turn back. Many lives have been lost by people going back to retrieve a coat or purse.
     

  • Keep critical vendor, telco and utility company records, such as circuit IDs on your person or off-site.
     

  • Have a recovery plan in place ahead of time, including phone trees with everyone's home and cell numbers. Set up an employee check-in and status update line in a city or town out of harm's way.

Protecting Customer Access
The second step is to protect customer access. When a disaster threatens or strikes, customers need to be served and/or kept in the loop.

Chances are good that callers will be annoyed if they can't get through. This is understandable as most people will not know that a disaster has hit your center.

And, if you provide a critical service, such as electricity, gas, telecom, water, healthcare or transportation, your customers expect you to be there. Your call volume may jump; callers may be impatient and worried.

To best serve your customers, take a closer look at how best to stay in touch with them during emergencies:

  • Determine which contacts you can divert to low-cost low-risk options such as IVR and web self-service, into voicemail, or defer, such as outbound programs.

    If you decide that you do not need to communicate directly with customers during emergencies, tell them on the auto-attendant: "we are experiencing an emergency that is impacting our ability to serve you. For quicker service, please use our voice menu or visit our web site, or leave a message." Make sure you have emergency scripts and pages pre-written for quick uploading.
     

  • If you need to handle customers' calls with live agents, determine the best means how for the value of those interactions. The options include equipping your contact centers to survive disasters, such as with generator power and with satellite-fitted trucks to protect you during voice/data outages; rerouting calls to distant sites; and outsourcing to providers with contact centers located in communities that will not be affected by the same events.

    You can rent temporary generators to power your contact centers. Remember, these units will be snapped up quickly, so obtain them as early as possible before a severe weather event, like a hurricane or tropical storm.
     

  • If you outsource, query vendors about their disaster response methods. Because there will be events that will prompt outsourcers' contact centers to close, select those firms that have networked sites located around the country, and/or in Canada.

Should you need to serve customers at your sites, here are several points to consider:

  • Take extra steps to disaster-proof your site. For example, is your contact center on the ground floor in a lower-lying area? Consider having sandbags at the ready or if you own the building, construct ramparts. Do you have exterior windows? Look at installing metal shutters over them to prevent flying glass and debris.
     

  • To control generator size and cost, determine the minimum number of workstations that you need and which circuits are essential to keep your centers operational. For example, you can, in most cases, get away with keeping the air conditioning, which consumes huge quantities of electricity, off the backup power. An exception is if your site also has a data center that needs constant cool temperature.
     

  • Never rely solely on voice over IP. Power and Internet service will go down before telco-provided PSTN, which energizes circuits from charged batteries housed in central offices.
     

  • Avoid making outbound calls from contact centers that are threatened or have been hit. You then keep phone circuits free for essential services.
     

  • Make sure you have extra desks, phones and computers at the backup sites. When events threaten or occur, ask staff to stay longer, arrive earlier and come in on their days off.
     

  • Assuming your centers remain open during and after a disaster, arrange transportation for some of your employees.
     

  • Have a call rerouting or outsourcing plan in place in case you have to evacuate your centers.

Planning advice
The third step is advance planning, to put your procedures in play. Here are some key areas to cover:

  • Whether your contacts are handled by your backup sites, or by outsourcers, devise ahead of time simple scripting and training. While these staffers will never be as proficient as the regulars, they will at least have the basics.

    Alternatively, route a share of your regular volume to the other locations to keep their staff fresh and up to date.
     

  • Arrange beforehand for a skeleton crew to staff your phones during disasters. Many employees will not stay if there is an imminent threat, or if they have young children or elderly parents that need their care.
     

  • Plan and implement contact rerouting far ahead of time for seamless switchover. Stay in touch with your long-distance and local telcos and have their contact information on hand at all times in case service is disrupted.
     

  • Have a recovery plan to phase your operations back to normal, with the implementation depending on the severity of disasters. It may take some time before employees return to and resume living in their homes or in replacement accommodations.

The good news is that people are very eager to rebuild their lives. This will also include helping your contact centers to get back in operation.  By taking these tips, your contact centers will be better prepared to withstand and recover from the next disaster.
 


About Gary Pudles:
Gary A. Pudles is President and CEO of the AnswerNet Network. He is also on the Wharton's Venture Initiation Program steering committee. Prior to founding AnswerNet Pudles served as vice president & general counsel, Apex Site Management (now American Tower), vice president, Muzak and manager, real estate, American Personal Communications.

About AnswerNet:
Company LogoThe AnswerNet Network is a telemessaging call center business and a provider of outsourced contact center and fulfillment services. On a combined basis, the AnswerNet Network centers have an average experience level of over 30 years each in the telemessaging business.
Company RSS Feed   Company Facebook   Company Twitter   Company YouTube   Company LinkedIn   Company Profile Page

Today's Tip of the Day - Utilize Time & Money Saving Tools

Read today's tip or listen to it on podcast.

Published: Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Printer Friendly Version Printer friendly version

2024 Buyers Guide Business Continuity

 
1.) 
Eckoh

CallGuard Remote
A flexible way to take secure, PCI DSS compliant payments from home or remote locations. It’s quick to deploy needs no changes to processes or systems.

CallGuard Remote prevents agents from seeing, hearing or recording card details so, the agent, their screen, and any call recordings are removed from the scope of PCI DSS.

This simple approach means the customer effectively types their own payment information into the agent’s payment screen, but with the card details being shielded from the agent’s view. It’s simple, and highly effective.

2.) 
Pointel

CCaaSSync – Contact Center Disaster Recovery Solution
CCaaSSync is a comprehensive solution to help businesses prepare for unforeseen disasters that may impact their Genesys cloud contact center infrastructure. Our disaster recovery solution ensures that your business remains operational and continues to provide seamless customer service even in the event of catastrophic failure of your primary infrastructure.

Our disaster recovery solution is a cloud-based service that allows you to synchronize your primary Genesys cloud contact center infrastructure with your disaster recovery Genesys cloud contact center infrastructure, allowing you to quickly and easily switch over to the backup infrastructure in the event of a disaster. This ensures tha...
(read more)

3.) 
Vads

VADS Business Continuity Plan
VADS provides a business continuity plan by providing full outsource services and manage services. we've provided this to several clients. You can contact us for a detailed study case.

4.) 
Teckinfo Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

InterDialog UCCS
Adapting to the new normal contact center industry has to be ready for work from anywhere agents to maintain business continuity. Even when working from remote locations, the work from home agents or remote agents need to be monitored for smooth customer service operations or effective tele sales.

InterDialog UCCS with its work from home agent ready call center software helps you to have complete control over your contact center operations. Agents can log in from any where , home, office or any other place where they are through their mobile phone or desktop , or even through our ID mobile app . With centralized recording & reporting , you gain visibility of all contact center metrics , and you can manage your center the same way as you were doing when working from office.
 

About us - in 60 seconds!

Join Our Team

Industry Champion Award Leaderboard

Most active award (top 10) entrants in the past 48 hours! - Vote for Others / About Program
Submit Event

Upcoming Events

The 19th AMERICAS Annual Best Practices Conferences are here! Meeting Point for the World's Best Contact Center & CX Companies Read More...
 31743 
Showing 1 - 1 of 3 items

Newsletter Registration

Please check to agree to be placed on the eNewsletter mailing list.
both ids empty
session userid =
session UserTempID =
session adminlevel =
session blnTempHelpChatShow =
CMS =
session cookie set = True
session page-view-total = 1
session page-view-total = 1
applicaiton blnAwardsClosed =
session blnCompletedAwardInterestPopup =
session blnCheckNewsletterInterestPopup =
session blnCompletedNewsletterInterestPopup =