Overview

Fire, flood, work stoppage, electrical uncertainty there are acres of reasons to worry about the ability of your center s critical systems to function non-stop. What you need to do is plan ahead for as many contingencies as you can think of. It s not a luxury it s a necessity.

There is no such thing as good downtime. In a call center, downtime means calls aren t coming, orders aren t being taken, customers are getting angry, impatient, upset. Or they re simply calling someone else, and you ll never know about it.

There are a lot of things that can bring your call center to a screeching halt. (Actually, the halt will be very, very quiet. . .) Natural disaster can keep people from coming to work storms, snow, flooding. A construction crew digging two towns away can cut your long distance link to the outside world.

Or, in perhaps the most common situation, problems with the electrical power system can knock you off line in one form or another without warning.

Here are some of the ways that centers (and vendors who supply those centers with technology) can protect themselves.

1. Identify the key systems that are at risk. Most are obvious: the switching technology, the data processing. But do you know how vulnerable your business is if your package delivery service isn t available? A lot of call centers found out the hard way when UPS was hit by labor trouble several years ago. It s one thing to be able to...