Three Best-Practices for Disaster Recovery
6 Dec, 2011
By: Mariann McDonaghBlizzards, Earthquakes and Fires, Oh My! Is Your Contact Center Prepared?
As we look ahead to the winter months, the threat of snow and ice storms looms large on the horizon. But for call centers, an emergency—weather related or otherwise—can happen at any time: a building fire, an unexpected power outage or a sudden IT system failure can knock the contact center completely off line. Adding to the problem is the uncertainty about just how long the disaster might last—a few hours, a few days or a few months? Even a short-term outage can do serious damage to your company's reputation and to your bottom line.
Let’s face it: disasters are inevitable. The best defense is to be exceptionally well-prepared so that when the worst happens, you’ll know exactly what to do to keep the lines of communication open between your company and your customers. Rather than lying awake at night worried about the worst-case scenario, put these disaster recovery best practices in place to ensure business continuity when your D-day comes (and, make no mistake: it eventually will).
1.) Formalize a Plan
Don’t assume everyone will know what to do. Assemble a dedicated DR team to establish and regularly update a formal disaster recovery plan with written instructions for procedures. The team should consist not only of IT and call center staff, but also cross-functional members who can provide support and input on how a call center outage might impact other business functions, like accounts payable, sales, etc.
2.) Disaster - Proof Technology
In the event of a major power outage, will your premise-based system stay up and running? Backup power might be one option, but what if a major system error knocks out the entire IT network? You need a fail-over plan. Setting up redundant on-premise solutions can be extremely expensive - purchasing duplicate hardware, software and other components can add up to a significant investment for a system that will likely sit idle most of the time. And when the time comes, are you sure it will work? Even if all your systems are in place at the office, what happens if a snowstorm or flood makes it impossible for agents to get there? That could mean thousands of customer calls going unanswered, wreaking havoc on your reputation and costing you sales.
Hosted contact center solutions eliminate these worries by providing the redundancy, flexibility and reliability to keep the call center up and running no matter what calamity befalls the organization. With off-site hosting and failover redundancy through multiple, geographically dispersed data centers, SaaS systems can guarantee 99.99% uptime, no matter what the conditions at your physical location. In the event agents are unable to get to the call center, a hosted solution can automatically route calls to agents' home or mobile phones, allowing them to seamlessly handle customer inquiries from home, if needed. For companies with multiple contact center locations, calls from one can be automatically forwarded to another, and the backup center can even ramp up to add new agents within minutes to handle the additional volume. Plus, with no additional hardware or software required, a hosted solution is much more affordable than redundant on-premise systems that mostly just gather dust.
3.) Train and Test
Of course, no amount of planning will suffice if you’re not certain the preparations you’ve made will actually work when the time comes. Train every employee on the company’s disaster recovery systems as part of the hiring process and conduct quarterly refresher training to keep everyone up to date. Conduct a complete test of your internal disaster recovery plan at least once a year, including evacuation drills, communication protocols and other routines to ensure the plans you’ve drafted work well in practice. Quarterly readiness audits to validate logins, training status and access to instructions can ensure continuity of the plan and process even through changes in personnel, seating locations, etc.
Finally, the call center platform itself should be regularly tested with monthly system health checks to be sure that everything works to your specifications when needed. Consult with ISP carriers to establish lead times for forwarding and re-pointing phone numbers to automate this process.
