At least two or three times per week I receive a call from a customer or colleague in a total panic because their phone lines are down. They remind me that they are losing thousands of dollars per minute because their “phone lines are their lifeblood” and I couldn’t agree more with those customers. There is not one successful business that I know of who doesn’t use phone services for one reason or another to generate business or provide service to their customers. Is there any other product or service that you can think of that you can say the same thing about? But when I ask them what their backup plan is when their lines do go down, often times they don’t have one or they didn’t follow through on it. This post is going to be the first a series of some of the most popular types of backup plans and some creative ones that will fit in your budget.
Before I get into the details I want to point our that since every business is different, the right type of backup plan will vary from business to business. This is pretty much true for everything related to telecom. Your size, number of locations, type of phone system and more will determine what the most economical backup plan should be.
Regardless of the backup plan, there are certian elements that must be present for a backup plan to have any merit. First, the plan should provide some true redundancy. In other words, the backup plan should have a reasonable chance of actually working in the event of an outage. Second, the plan needs to be documented. If there is an outage, the only way the plan will actually get executed is if it’s documented in a place that someone knows where it is. Third, somebody needs to be responsible for executing the backup plan. This means there probably needs to be at least two people (a primary and a backup) who know the plan and have the ability to execute it. Lastly, the backup plan needs to be practiced occasionally to make sure it is current. As long as these elements are present, you are ready to figure out what your best backup plan should be.
In my next post, which will be available in a few days, I will begin to explore one of the many differnt types of bakup plans that your company can implement.
“They remind me that they are losing thousands of dollars per minute because their “phone lines are their lifeblood” and I couldn’t agree more with those customers. ”
And yet, so many people believe telecommunication services are a “commodity.” Hate to break it to all of you, but you get what you pay for in regards to your telecommunications. If you pay for a basement-bargain provider, expect to get that service in return. Pay a little more and you get amazing service and quality.
When it comes to redundancy, businesses never truly grasp this until they have a horrific event…and at that point it’s too late. The loss of data can be extremely costly and could bring law suits. Or simply, you’re missing calls.
But, steering it back to simply the phone lines… Businesses that do not have call forwarding or multiple points of phone contact are simply tightening the noose ever so slowly. And it is there own fault because they fail to realize business communications are an INVESTMENT. Communication is how you interact with your clients, whether it is through phone, web site, or email. Why would you want to skimp on this?
~The Guru
By: The Small Biz. Guru on February 27, 2008
at 12:46 pm
Well said.
By: Dante Sabatucci on February 27, 2008
at 2:33 pm