For enterprises across the globe, having a disaster recovery (DR) plan in place can be the difference between a business surviving or closing its doors. In 2017, disasters caused an estimated $306 billion in total economic losses. Whether a product recall or hurricane, businesses are affected by unexpected crises and looking to strengthen their DR plans.
While employee safety and IT business continuity are staples of disaster recovery plans, businesses may be overlooking an important third pillar: the contact center. As a lifeline to your customers, contact centers will be the first to be hit with inquiries when disaster strikes. If your contact center doesn’t have the people, processes and technology in place to survive the proverbial storm, your entire business will feel the impact.
Take a people-first approach with training and staffing
If you’ve played Jenga, you know that one wrong move can cause the entire tower of blocks to come tumbling down. The same can be said for a contact center during a crisis. All staff members must have dedicated roles and a clear understanding of where they should focus their efforts during the situation, so the system doesn’t fall apart.
To keep your Jenga tower upright, you’ll need a crisis contingency plan with regular training so that your staff feels comfortable with executing it. Part of this plan should include a system to route calls to another center during a disaster and plan for agents to work from a remote location or from their homes during the event. In crisis situations, companies should not find themselves scrambling to move people and/or equipment while they are already under stress. For a smooth transition in a heightened emergency, you will need to implement your business continuity plan.
Ensure you have a scalable technology plan to address at the point of crisis. For example, where will agents be located? Is there a secure VPN they can access for customer information? Do you have enough equipment (e.g., headsets) to allow agents to work remotely? Do you have technology in place to provide the option of a call back rather than leaving customers waiting in the queue for a lengthy period? Using best practices, customers are expecting 99.99% uptime; thereby requiring a plan be in place and ready to go.
Protect your existing data
While data back-up used to be a foreign term to those outside of IT, it’s now common usage. Today’s consumers sleep easy at night knowing their smart devices are backing up their data. Yet, at the enterprise level, data back-up is more complex and critical. Customer data is the crux of all contact center operations and back-up must be a priority for DR planning.
Recent survey shows that less than a quarter of companies are backing up their data to local drives, while another 26 percent are relying on tape backups for data storage. However, in the event of a natural disaster, these types of storage mechanisms will not guarantee safeguarded data, especially if critical infrastructure is damaged during a fire or flood. Organizations should consider a hybrid storage method, including cloud-based storage for a redundant infrastructure.
Also, companies considering an offshore model, it’s important to gauge how reliable a country’s network and infrastructure may be and how much is being invested in improvements and advances with emerging technologies. A valuable tool for benchmarking data is the ICT Development Index, which is based on internationally agreed information and communication technologies indicators. It can help inform which countries are likely to provide the best infrastructure.
It’s also crucial to analyze what resources potential partners have in place. For example, your IT team might want to know if the delivery centers are network redundant and if, along with DR, business continuity procedures are documented. This will help mitigate risk of an outage because customer communications can be routed seamlessly from one location to another.
Understand how communication will change – and the channels it will impact
The proliferation of mobile devices and social media usage means that consumers have more ways than ever to reach out in a crisis. During Hurricane Harvey, there were outages for more than 148,000 Internet, TV and phone customers; so businesses turned to social media to communicate with their customers. Ensure your agents are trained in social media communication and have the tools and technology in place to respond to incoming social inquiries. Use of social sentiment tools can help management quickly spot a murmur before it becomes a catastrophe. Whether a natural disaster or product defect, you can monitor customer interactions to determine if they’re getting correct answers quickly or are getting deterred and frustrated.
Report and analyze the aftermath
After a disaster, it’s essential to conduct a thorough assessment of how the systems and procedures performed to make them more efficient and cost effective in the future. Companies should review their defined service level agreements (SLAs) and key performance indicators (KPIs) as a baseline for improving processes for future disaster recovery and business continuity planning. Missteps should be recorded and adjusted, and executives should ensure that the plans are regularly updated with new training, technology and product solutions.
Additionally, in the age of heightened privacy concerns and regulations such as GDPR, communications and reporting by global companies must be compliant with EU regulations. With contact centers handling tens of millions of customer interactions annually, agents need to be aware of compliance regulations and any additional steps they need to take be compliant with them. A dedicated Data Protection Officer, along with systems and technology, can assist with these requirements.
Being disaster-ready from the start
Being prepared for these unpredictable, yet inevitable, situations is a crucial part of business strategy. Organizations have millions of interactions with customers each year, yet it’s the interactions that happen in times of crisis that can matter most. While no organization can ever be fully prepared for every emergency, having the right people, processes and technology in place can help the situation immensely – for agents and customers.
