How to Protect Your Business Communications from Hurricanes Like Harvey
The Beginner’s Guide to Reducing Risks with Cloud Communications
Where To Begin
Building a disaster recovery plan for your company’s phone system may not be the most exciting task on your to-do list. But it’s arguably the most important.
Your company probably can’t afford any downtime due to a system failure, flood, or even natural disasters. The best way to make major headway toward protecting your business? Simply moving your communications network to the cloud.
We’ll teach you how to build a disaster recovery plan, and why cloud communications is the best choice for businesses that need to work through any storm:
Building Your
Disaster Recovery Plan
Upgrading your company’s phone system to cloud communications is the natural first step to building a 21st century disaster recovery plan. But in the meantime, it’s vital to know how you’ll handle communications if something goes wrong.
1. Survey The Basics
Understand the basics now, so you can save face later if things go south. Ask yourself:
What phone numbers does my company own?
Can I route calls on the fly?
Do I have an easy web interface to make changes as needed?
If I lose power or cell tower access, where do my customer calls go?
2. Know Your Gaps
In order to fill in the gaps, you have to learn what they are. Ask yourself:
What other parts of your business does downtime affect?
Do your suppliers/shipment have numbers they can call anywhere, anytime?
If your contact center manager or receptionist are absent, who are their backups? How will their calls be routed?
If your office is closed, is there an automatic greeting to update? How will you alert customers? Who checks your voicemail?
3. Build Your Backups and Train Your Team
Once you’ve addressed some of these key questions, write up a quick reference document and pass it around to employees who need to know.
This should spark the necessary team discussion: if you go down, what’s your backup plan? Running manual or automatic failovers or relying on SIP trunking are certainly options. But prevention and preparation are critical.
More PBX, More Problems
When you have a premises-based PBX, your company risks electrical circuits in your data center getting overloaded, critical component failures, and more. Your server could even be flooded by a storm or a failed water valve.
Some companies duplicate their communications infrastructure at a remote location. It can be an effective strategy – but very expensive. Add on the costs of replacing a PBX every 8 years on average, and the costs quickly outweigh the benefits.
The #1 Unified Cloud Communications Platform from People You Trust.
When you work with Total Technologies, you get business-grade protections against outages of any type – without unnecessary expense and headaches.
You also get features that help you work through the storm, like a business phone number that travels with you, HD voice and video conferencing from anywhere, and powerful, modern-day contact center capabilities.
Simply take your phone number and your network with you, log in from any Internet-connected device, and work uninterrupted.
Even if a disaster causes you to move your entire team to a new location or forward your main office number to an alternate facility, with Total Technologies, your customers won’t know the difference.
Not Just For Rainy Days
Still not convinced?
5 key benefits to unified communications:
- Receive calls to your office number from any device, anywhere.
- Route calls anywhere at any time.
- Use presence information to see who is free to take your call.
- Give employees their own virtual meeting space, so there is no competition for meeting times or conference bridges. Invited colleagues, customers, suppliers and partners can connect using a simple one-click browser link.
- Integrated email, chat and calendars save you time.
4 contact center perks:
- Get a single, integrated queue for voice, web, email, chat and social media channels.
- Centrally manage and administer ACD, IVR, call recording, interaction history and CRM.
- Balance call loads across multiple locations.
- Improve outcomes with predictive, analytics-based routing.
Carrier-Class Cloud Communications
Total Technologies provides direct access to BroadSoft’s customized cloud communication solutions and services to meet complex enterprise needs.
We offer a rock-solid delivery platform, feature-rich services and a track-record for exceptional customer service.
