DISASTER RECOVERY IN THE CONTACT CENTER.

Disaster does not have to come to an enterprise or contact center in the form of a major natural disaster worthy of news coverage. Disaster in the workplace can come in the form of heavy rains, a power outage, loss of potable water or a backhoe digging up telecom fiber across the street. Anything that renders employees incapable of working is a disaster and responsible organizations should plan for such an event. This article has been put together by the research team at ZRG International. Find out more about ZRG towards the end.

An enterprise or contact center that spends the time and energy to create a disaster recovery (DR) or business continuity (BC) plan is very wise to do so and should plan for different contingencies that could happen, rate their impact and then rate their likelihood and build a plan around those elements that are both highly impacting to an organization and also fairly likely. Whatever the expected incident, an organization should understand what to do if employees cannot access their office workstations or if the contact center loses electricity.

It would be best to develop a very functional plan that is more step by step - regardless of the disaster, what is to happen first, second, third after the disaster is over. Things like checking on employees, checking for fire or other situations that would cause an evacuation. If the building is safe to occupy and employees are safe and well, then a quick triage of production systems may be next: phone systems, call routing applications, CRM systems and so on. A validation that dial tone exists, electricity is on or else UPS systems or backup generators are engaged would be next and so on.

A few things to consider as you approach your plan:

If production systems need to be repaired or replaced, is there a protocol during a disaster to purchase them? Equipment and application vendors should be documented so they can easily be contacted and appropriate service levels should exist to get new equipment dispatched to get systems back online.

Approval processes for purchasing equipment should be in place when normal processes cannot be engaged. It should be known who in the organization can purchase what dollar amounts without approval if the CFO cannot be reached and purchase orders cannot be signed etc.

Getting computer systems and telephones back online quickly is critical to the organization's continuity as they are typically the life blood of the organization's revenue...