Implementing an emergency telecoms recovery solution could save businesses hours of lost productivity let alone money that could be lost in potential sales.

Prevention better than cure

The key to preventing the potentially devastating effects of our country’s unpredictable weather is to plan effectively in advance, not just for our homes but for our businesses as well, and we should be considering the additional consequences of these disruptive scenarios such as:

• Transport links being broken, including roads, bus services and trains
• Limited or no access to shops for food
• Buildings having to be evacuated due to damage, lack of ultilities or flooding
• Or as happened in Gloucestershire a couple of years ago, lack of clean drinking water or electricity as sub stations can be flooded in heavy rain

As a business any one of these scenarios would mean that your employees may not be able to get into their normal place of work.

What would this mean for your business and your customers?

• Fewer people to answer the phones means that your customer service experience is de-valued and you could have some very unhappy customers
• You could lose new business opportunities because the right people were not available to take the call

How would it affect your supply chain or crucial contracts?

• You could see major delays in stock being delivered, meaning that you cannot fulfill orders in the timescales you have promised, leading to customer dissatisfaction

What happens if your competitors are better prepared than you?

• Your competitors could take advantage and steal your market share/ customers while you spend all your effort on restoring your operations to normal

If we consider yesterday’s flooding in Sctoland and Wales, it poses the perfect example of what could happen elsewhere int he UK. In Aberdeenshire a care home was evacuated because of flooding. Now unless they had the foresight to leave a recorded message, anyone wanting to call the home to find out where their relatives or friends had been moved to may be left in the dark if no-one was able to answer the phone.

Lack of preparation affects the bottom line

As road and rail links were closed, in some areas people could  not physically get to where they needed to be. Any number of those people could have a job which relies on being able to answer a desk phone, or being present in an office or building. Unless they have an alternative building that they can get to with alternative access to their work information and tools, those people can do nothing to contribute to the continous fulfillment of their job responsibilities, thereby costing their business time and money.

We are in an era where our businesses do not have to be brought to a stand still because of severe weather. We have the ability to plan ways around it and no-one should really be caught short. If we can’t leave our homes then we should have the ability (job role permitting) to be able to work from home, or other local location.

Innovative Customer Service:

Graham Chick, CEO at GemaTech had 28 half hour meetings over 2 days with individuals who were looking to find new, innovative ways to improve customer service. An enthusiasm for embracing technology enabling companies to target their customers effectively through many types of media was very evident. Many companies across sectors such as Travel and Tourism and the public entertainment sectors now have established loyalty databases which they are keen to leverage.

Routes to Market:

It was encouraging to find that many companies are widening their vision in terms of their marketing and customer service strategies to embrace evolving communication methods such as using Twitter, Facebook and other social media channels to add value and to increase customer retention. GemaTech has been promoting this relatively untapped route to market through its Rapid Call Out solution and the market is responding positively to such developments.

Ownership Costs:

The applications for a system which can target market segments quickly and cost-effectively came across clearly from delegates who saw the benefits of being able to target their markets any way they wanted, e.g. to under 25’s, those who repeat purchase certain products or services, and indeed even companies who want to be able to contact their suppliers or distributors with promotional information. What impressed them also was the low annual cost of being able to communicate with their customers, suppliers or even employees through multiple channels.

Finding the most effective way of reacting to target market demands is often seen as looking for gold dust, yet from what we are hearing, companies know what they want and are actively looking for flexible, cost-effective and targeted solutions offering more than just SMS text capabilities.

The survey found that 45% of respondents (out of over 600 CIOs from multinational organisations) said that ‘multiple communication channels cause severe delays in the response time from colleagues which can negatively impact business processes and productivity.’

35% also stated that ‘uncoordinated or ineffective contact with colleagues’ hampers the ability to meet deadlines on time. Apparently this has led to lost sales, lost revenue and customer dissatisfaction.

The answer, many organisations are finding is to move towards unified communication strategies. My personal opinion is that this is indeed the right way to go, but that the emphasis should most definitely be on the person you are trying to get hold of rather than the communication method. For example, how many people know all the mobile phone numbers of their friends? I would suggest that very few do, the reason being that we store our friend’s and colleague’s numbers under their ‘name’ in a contact list. Surely when we click on that person’s name, it is irrelevant how contact with that person is made (pricing models dependent of course), it should be up to them how they want to be contacted - whether that call is received via landline, office phone, fax number, email or mobile number, we just need to know that we will be able to get through to them when we click on their name.

It all comes down to how people like to work at the end of the day, some like to be at their office desks, taking calls on their desk phones, others like to receive their calls on their mobile phones. I remember in one office I used to work in, a particular guy could think and talk better on his feet, tending to walk around the office with his mobile phone connected to an ear piece, so even though people called his desk phone as the number was published in the company directory, he was in a position to take the call in his own way.

Communication technology should be there to make life easier, but often coordination is so lacking that it soon becomes confusing and hindering. Making it easy to use and seamless for the person trying to contact you is the only way this strategy can work!

Of course, if people do not want to be contacted then there is very little anyone can do to get hold of them!

Author: Karen Jones

Undertaking some research, I have discovered that there is in fact a psychological reason, known as ‘optimism bias’, for why we tend to think that such a negative disruptive event is unlikely to happen ‘to us’.

For my full article on the subject of insufficient telecoms recovery planning click here.

Karen Jones

1. Identify which employees can easily work from home. Working from home should provide the employee with the ability to undertake the vast majority of their normal job responsibilities, particularly if they are desk based. This is easily achieved by equipping them with secure data access and a telecoms system which enables them to answer their incoming calls just as if somebody was calling them at their normal place of work. This technology is easy to implement and is fast becoming the norm for many organisations.

2. Define the nature of the work to be undertaken by each employee and you will be able to provide the IT and telecoms tools necessary to seamlessly continue undertaking their job from home, as if they were at their desk in their normal place of work. You may wish to consider implementing tools such as incoming call re-routing and wireless/ 3G data connection applications delivering secure access to your corporate network.

3. Develop a checklist or agreement so that both employer and employee understand the terms under which home working is allowed. As a consequence, employees will then understand how home working will be managed and facilitated by the employer, because safety and security is crucial within such an arrangement.

4. Consider any other issues, such as how costs for heating, lighting, phone bills, and broadband access may be re-imbursed to the employee.

5. Consider how the employee will securely access corporate data and systems, such as via a corporate and secure VPN or secure web based email systems. Don’t forget to ensure a company directory of contact information is readily available.

6. In order to ensure home workers don’t feel isolated and to facilitate meetings you may want to make tele/ web conferencing or regular email/ web chat and Intranet communication available. These tools are easy to implement and relatively cheap. Some web conferencing packages offer free 30 day trials.

7. Communicate health and safety requirements for minimum home working standards and ensure employees comply. This is not as daunting as it appears. What you require for your employees in the office is just the same as what you would require for employees at home, including risk assessments. It’s just at a different location.

8. Ensure that employees can receive their incoming calls. Customers and suppliers should not be given a new number to call, they should be able to get through to the person they have dialled on their regular published contact number, rather than a new mobile or landline number to ensure seamless customer service and business continuity. This also protects the privacy of the employee by not publishing their personal mobile or home phone numbers to the public.

9. Management of home workers is not difficult as long as regular communication between team leader and employees is maintained. For the manager who fears losing control, secure voice recording of re-routed phone calls is easy to introduce as is keyboard key stroke monitoring.

10. Finally don’t expect sick employees, or carers to be accessing their emails as regularly as if they were in the office. You are giving them the tools to allow them to do what they can within a relationship of trust. Even if they are only able to work for example at 30% capacity every day, this could save your organisation between 7 and 10 days worth of 30% capacity which you would have lost were they not able to work from home!

If you found these tips useful, you may also wish to visit our blog for future tips and helpful advice on flexible working and the flu pandemic:

Recession and Swine Flu: A lethal combination?
Swine Flu: A greater threat than terrorism?
Swine Flu: Will your organisation survive?
Swine Flu Pandemic: Would Your Employees Take Advantage?

Author: Karen Jones