Call-Centres

What impact will disruption have if your customers, suppliers and the public don't have the availability of the call-centre; and a cut phone line is all it takes. How long will they wait? Will they dial the competition and what's the effect on the company's credibility and reputation?

If your company depends on a call-centre for a core part of their business then contingency measures are a must. Shutting down is the worst choice - it doesn't meet the needs of either your customers or your business. Forward planning is essential and some of the critical factors to consider are:

• Identify key systems and critical applications. What are the risks and threats to them?

• Build resilience [e.g. keep equipment in different rooms, multiple power circuits].

• Choose network providers carefully.

• Develop a disaster recovery plan and maintain it.

• Consider the availability of a recovery centre [profile requirements for immediate use].

• Keep important documentation and critical spares in a secure, accessible, off-site location.

• Test the recovery plan and procedures regularly.

IP Call Centre [internet protocol] technology offers a cost-effective solution to improve business resilience and is based on software that runs on commodity servers and workstations.

IP technology is inherently resilient and well suited to deal with network outages as well as sudden spikes in load. It is likely, over time, to replace legacy circuit-switched technology.