Contact Center Pipeline April 2025 | Page 19

BY BRENDAN READ, CONTACT CENTER PIPELINE; Q & A WITH ADVISORY BOARD

DR. DEBRA BENTSON

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led an untold number of us to grab our gear, leave our company offices, and head home. It was an instructive exercise on remote work, the speed with which we could pack a box, and the need for business continuity planning( BCP).

Many of us are wondering how to prevent, plan for, and minimize the impact of the next disaster: regardless of the origin. Bad things happen that put people, things, and our ability to conduct business at risk. The bad things range from the possible to the unimaginable.

There are some key components to building a BCP that will operate in a never-ending cycle:

1. Prepare by considering: a. What bad things are not just likely, but possible? b. How can we prevent them? c. Specifically, who does what when bad things happen?

d. How and what will you communicate so everyone knows what to do?

e. How, and at what cadence, will plans be reviewed and tested?

2. Execute the BCP by: a. Working the plan until you can return to business as usual. b. Communicating clearly and regularly to everyone. c. Documenting what was done for later review.

3. Conduct an after-action assessment to determine success and failure points in the plan to refine the plan for the next time. Update the plan based on the results.

A colleague told me years ago that his employer had bought a large generator to provide their office with backup power. A power outage happened, but the generator did not start. They were left in the dark and unable to conduct business.

When they checked the generator, they discovered the fuel tank was empty. Why? Someone had sold the generator fuel to save money.

Readiness has a cost, and the silence can be deafening when you’ re left in the dark.

SANGEETA BHATNAGAR, SB GLOBAL

There are a couple of angles to look at this from. Some centers learned valuable lessons from COVID and various natural disasters that displaced workers and which impacted processes and overall customer experience( CX).

Here are several suggestions to support your Business Continuity strategy:

• Have agents in multiple parts of the country / world. In case there is an environmental issue, tech issue, or natural disaster that impacts either onsite or remote workers, you have other locations that can step up and support business continuity. But ensure that you are not concentrated in only one region.

• Find a good BPO partner. By having a solid business process outsourcer( BPO) partner that serves as an extension of your brand, you can be in different time zones, and in different parts of the world, to seamlessly service your customers. The customer will not be negatively impacted by whatever caused the service disruption.

• Keep more than one internet provider. In case the internet goes down nationwide for your remote agents or onsite staff, you would have your remote agents who have a different provider be available to help with service volume.

• Have well-trained backup staff. Make sure that the backup locations ' staff are well-trained to handle a natural disaster or unexpected overflow. It is important to test out your team and strategy before you actually need it.

• Ensure excellent security and CX. Make sure that the backup location( s) does not compromise the security / privacy of your customers or have any negative impact on them.

• Providing solid links. Ensure content and links to processes on your shared sites are all current and updated. Someone, at any location, should be able to step in by looking at the shared content and get current knowledge.

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