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What is invisible, completely quiet, and can cost a call center $50,000 an hour?

 

Down time.  Specifically, the kind of down time that happens when your toll-free communications network goes down. A recent USA Today survey[1] of 200 data center managers found that over 80% of call center managers reported that their phone system downtime costs exceeded $50,000 per hour. That’s actually just the tip of the revenue-loss iceberg:  for over 25%, downtime cost exceeded $500,000 per hour.

 

While this may not be news to any call center team, particularly one who has experienced the downtime revenue loss, there is a silver lining.   There’s a clear-cut path to creating an antidote to downtime and revenue loss that every call center should have tucked away for that inevitable day when the phones quit ringing.

 

The antidote is a disaster recovery plan, and simply put, every call center operation should have one.  The plan is a combination of no-nonsense tips, but it is also, to be frank, an investment in a backup carrier.  There are a number of a backup carriers available to suit the particular needs of your operation, the key to selecting the right one is understanding the seven steps needed to ensure a smooth-running fall-back strategy.

 

In order to utilize multiple carriers, you must have an ID that isn’t tied to that carrier. Why is a unique RespOrg[2] ID important?  It gives you the power to use any carrier you want and in any combination you want – a time and revenue-saving strategy when the current system fails. You can either get your own unique RespOrg ID.

 

Establish contracts and set up networks with at least two unique carriers and get complementary carrier agreements in place. In the telecommunications industry, this agreement is known by different names, it really just depends on which carrier you are talking to. At its core, it informs the carrier that you’ll be using their network with your own unique RespOrg ID. What happens if a complimentary carrier agreement isn’t in place?   In simple terms, a carrier will look at numbers in their network; if your number isn’t included with any agreement they could scrub it. This agreement establishes that your number belongs on the carrier’s network, but under your own unique ID.  

 

This falls into the arena of administrative detail, but it’s an important one If your Toll-Free numbers are not on a neutral RespOrg ID, you will not be able to use multiple carriers or switch between them at will.

Plan and practice:  create disaster recovery scenarios that can be utilized should an outage occur.  By creating these templates numbers can be quickly moved from one carrier to another. Think about this: the numbers are divided into groups with the understanding that every group of numbers will route in the same way. You can change the routing of each group with a click of a button. Without this previously-worked out template strategy, your RespOrg service provider won’t be able to swiftly switch your service over to a working network.

 

Simple, critical, yet easy to overlook:   your RespOrg should route 100 percent of the numbers down the carriers individually to test each network and make sure there’s no issue with provisioning. . In test dialing all the numbers, your team will ensure calls are hitting the correct carrier, and that calls are set up on each network correctly and each call is being terminated properly.

 

Once this is done and any challenges are identified and resolved, your RespOrg will apply the toll free numbers to your desired template. This is where your team applies the numbers to routing records in the predefined groups as mentioned above.

 

Are we repeating ourselves?  And so should your emergency RespOrg process.  Testing this second time is a very important step in the process and imperative to make sure the template you’ve created together has been built correctly and the calls are being delivered as intended.

 

 

Working phone lines are the lifeblood of the call center.  Be a proactive partner in your network success, and understand these seven preemptive measures, designed to ensure continued communications with your customer and network. Being thorough in the porting process, and having a flawless disaster recovery plan in place, can be the best $50,000-an-hour-savings plan your call center enterprise could imagine.

 

 

 

 

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