Future-Proof Call Centre Continuity Against the Unknown

Justin Robbins of 8×8 discusses how your contact centre can improve its business continuity processes for the future.

From natural disasters to wide-scale power outages, there are plenty of events that can knock your physical call centre out of action.

When the unexpected occurs, a solid call centre disaster recovery plan keeps you up and running even if your regular operations are shut down.

Identifying Your Risks

Before you can develop your call centre disaster recovery plan, you need to identify potential threats to your business operations. Some of the things that might shut down your call centre include:

• Physical damage to your facility and equipment caused by a natural disaster or severe weather event
• Network and power outages originating outside your facility
• Internet outages resulting from service provider disruptions
• Software failures limiting access to customer databases and internal communication tools
• System issues, such as loss of caller ID functions and client databases

Creating a Call Centre Disaster Recovery Plan

When you’re planning for future disasters, having a backup plan already in place helps you maintain business continuity.

A system such as 8×8 call centre disaster recovery services reduces the impact of a major disruption in regular services because you can switch directly to virtual operation without having to wait for your physical servers to come back online.

The ultimate goal is for customers to not even notice you’ve switched systems because performance remains the same.

Securing Your Physical Location

In some cases, you may be able to get your physical site back up and running, but you need redundancy in place for this to happen. Generators and battery backup systems provide options when power outages interrupt operations.

Make sure that managers and IT staff members have access to emergency contacts, including contacts at the local power station and your network service provider. Knowing exactly who to call makes restoring necessary services easier.

Implementing Cloud-Based Solutions

Even when you have plans to restore physical operations, the restoration of equipment and services takes time. Cloud-based solutions let you shift immediately to a distributed system, so employees can continue working.

Customer support employees can log in from their own homes or from remote locations around the world. Many cloud communications platforms include data centres on five continents, so you can maintain consistent performance no matter how widespread the disaster is.

Long-Term System Continuity

Call centre disaster recovery solutions include restoring your entire operation to a new physical location or switching part or all of your regular operations to a cloud-based system.

Choosing a global system with fault-tolerant architecture ensures that calls get completed even if a single database, independent server, or cluster of servers goes out of action.

Justin Robbins

Modern cloud-based call centre services include access to unlimited voice calling, video and audio conferencing, supervisor analytics, and predictive dialling so you can carry out the same functions as you did at your physical location without requiring employees to be on-site.

Switching to cloud-based call centre operation not only prepares you for potential disaster situations but also reduces your overhead and streamlines operations when you’re dealing with a global customer base.

This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of 8x8 – View the Original Article

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About 8x8

8x8 is transforming the future of business communications as a leading Software-as-a-Service provider of voice, video, chat, contact centre, and enterprise-class API solutions, powered by one global cloud communications platform.

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Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.

Author: 8x8