For those of you
who are becoming regular readers of this series of
articles written for Call Centre Helper’s newsletter,
focusing on the need for deploying effective business
continuity policies and plans for your call centre.
I sincerely trust that, after my first two articles,
you now have a better understanding of some of the
reasons why call centre operators should give very
careful consideration to the adoption of well thought
out contingency arrangements, as well as an insight
into some of the issues that need to be carefully
thought through when preparing your contingency plans.
The
fact remains however, that if your call centre business
operates from a single call centre, (a single building)
then whatever the “whys and wherefores” you
ultimately have a particularly vulnerable single
point of failure – and if you have two/three/four,
or more, call centres making up your organisation,
then you have, potentially, two/three/four, or more,
potential points of failure in your organisation.
And whilst it is indeed possible to spend very considerable
amounts of money in a valiant attempt to protect
your telecoms infrastructure serving your single,
or multiple, call centre(s) by implementing various
levels of resilience ranging from the ultimate of
providing full “dual parenting” (introducing
separate ISDN30 connections from two different exchanges
and connecting to two separate ADD/PBXs located at
different ends of the building but linked as though
they were one unit), to “diverse routing” (the
delivery of inbound/outbound calls via alternative
ISDN30 connections fed from the same “Exchange” – where
extreme care needs to be taken to ensure both telephone
cables are not running in the same duct), these huge
investments are rendered useless, if the building
itself if no longer there – or perhaps more
telling, your call centre Agents are unable to access
the building for any number of reasons.
So how do we address and mitigate the effect of this “single
point of failure”? The answer was suggested
in the closing paragraphs of last month’s article – by
enabling your call centre Agents, in times of adversity
to be able work remotely – either at home or
indeed closer to home in small “clusters” of
2/3/4/5 Agents and thus operating as “virtual
call centres”.
Probably the most compelling argument for considering
the use of homeworking, or at the very least, remote
working, as a business continuity planning measure
is the need to effectively plan for the extremely
likely ‘flu pandemic that is being widely forecast
as an imminent inevitability with Sir Liam Donaldson,
Chief Medical Officer of Health in the UK clearly
stating during 2006 that it is simply a case of “when” not “if” a ‘flu
pandemic affects Corporate Britain. Why? Because
throughout history, the shortest period between ‘flu
pandemics has been 11 years and the longest is 38/39
years – with 2006 being 37 years from the last
occurrence. By way of explanation, Pandemic ‘flu
is a killer disease caused by the emergence of a
new strain of influenza virus to which human beings
have little or no immunity. ‘Flu pandemics
killed more than 40 million people throughout the
20th Century – with current estimates being
used for planning purposes being that some 25% of
the global population will be affected in some way – and
some of the Emergency Services here in the UK planning
for the incapacitation of up to 50% of their workforce
as a result of either personal illness, family illness,
looking after children at home due to the closure
of schools or inability to travel to work, for any
one of a number of reasons, but including suspension
of the transportation system, petrol garages being
closed, buildings being closed due to failed maintenance
systems etc.
The subject of pandemic planning itself is far too
wide and complex an issue for inclusion in this series
of articles but an extremely comprehensive 68 page
booklet entitled “Flu Pandemic Guidelines for
Business”, sponsored by an educational grant
from Roche, the manufacturers of “Tamiflu” is
available from Survive, the Business Continuity Group
by either sending an email to gemaflu@survive.com
or completing an application form at www.survive.com/news.
Consequently, having identified one very significant
potential risk which could have a dramatic effect
on the successful ongoing operation of any call centre
business, the question that has to be asked is….where
would your Agents be prepared to work in such circumstances?
With the answer being quite unequivocally, where
they would feel safest working – at home where
they can stay in doors, and also care for their family
who may, or may not have fallen ill, and continue
to work – even on a part time basis dealing
with those mission critical inbound calls in order
to maintain “business as usual” so far
as is possible given all of the prevailing circumstances.
So, precisely how can a remote / homeworking call
centre environment be created technologically? Thankfully,
given technological advances over recent years, the
implementation of remote/homeworking solutions, for
use either solely following the invocation of a company’s
disaster recovery / business continuity plan, or
use in an “all day – every day” working
environment, need not be an overly complex operation.
There are a growing number of telecoms technology
companies that offer remote working ACD/PBX functionality
ranging from the vendors of traditional ACD/PBXs
that are located and installed in the conventional
call centre building(s) which can now treat remotely
based Agents in exactly the same way (connectivity
wise) as an Agent sitting within the conventional
call centre – although these types of solution
are obviously vulnerable to the loss of the actual
call centre building as a result of fire, flood or
cut telephone cable - to “virtual – pay
as you go” ACD solutions which simply comprise
ACD software which vendors incorporate and install
within certain selected partner carrier’s Networks.
There is also the intermediate solutions where specialist
vendors, such as GemaTech, have developed combined
hardware and software total solutions which can be
sited within the sanctity and security of any carrier’s
exchange and, by either replicating an existing,
traditional, call centre based ACD/PBX, or replacing
such a legacy system which has come to the end of
its functional life, inbound calls can be intelligently
distributed, using full skills based routing to the
most appropriate Agent who has chosen to work from
literally anywhere that has access to a working telephone – with,
ultimately, a Broadband connection to that “remote” location – an
Agents home?
And why a Broadband connection? Because whilst the
most crucial operation of an inbound call centre
is the answering of the customer’s call in
a timely and courteous manner, the object of the
exercise is to process that customer’s specific
requirements via a live connection to a central data
base – but more of that next month when we
look more closely at the operation of a true virtual
call centre and how the use of this more much flexible
way of working can provide you with the ultimate
in business continuity planning and also dramatically
effect your “bottom line” by allowing
you to significantly expand your call centre business
whilst incorporating comprehensive business continuity
planning…..for free!
Five key questions to ask your Call Centre Operator
when planning for a Pandemic or other serious Outage.
1. What will be the effect on our call centre business
if between 15% and up to 50% of our Call Centre Agents
could not, or chose not, to travel to work in our
call centre(s)?
2. What proportion of our Agents are likely to be
affected by school closures i.e are they from two
parent working families where one parent will be
required to stay at home to look after the child/children?
3. Would the outbreak of a ‘flu pandemic result
in more or less calls to our call centre operation?
4. How many of our Agents would be prepared, given
their respective family commitments to travel to
(commute to) a recovery site some distance away from
their normal place of work?
5. What would happen to our “backroom / support” functions
including IT Support, Accounts, (including the processing/payment
of weekly/monthly salaries?
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