“Contact Centers with Nine Lives” Topics
1. Business Continuity Definitions
2. Mission Criticality
– Essential constants for mission criticality
3. Business Continuity Disciplines
– Burning questions to ask yourself
– Best questions to ask your vendors
Business Continuity
Definition:
Source: The Business Continuity Institute
What can be Adverse
wikipedia.org
Natural disasters
1.1 Avalanche
1.2 Cold
1.3 Disease
1.4 Drought
1.5 Earthquake
1.6 Famine
1.7 Fire
1.8 Flood
1.9 Hail
1.10 Heat
1.11 Hurricane
1.12 Hypernova
1.13 Impact event
1.14 Limnic eruption
1.15 Landslide
1.16 Mudslide
1.17 Sink hole
1.18 Solar flare
1.19 Storm surge
1.20 Thunderstorm
1.21 Tornado
1.22 Tsunami
1.23 Volcanic eruption
1.24 Waterspout
1.25 Winter storm
2 Man-made disasters
2.1 Aviation
2.2 Arson
2.3 CBRNs
2.4 Civil disorder
2.5 Power outage
2.6 Public relations crisis
2.7 Radiation Contamination
2.8 Space Disasters
2.9 Telecommunication
outage
2.10 Terrorism
2.11 War
Essential Constants
• Predictability
– Fewer surprises
• Reliability
– Working no matter what
Predictability: Reducing Surprises
Questions to Ask Yourself
• How predictable is my Moves,
Adds and Change process?
• Are my traditional contact center
integrations disappointing?
– Business Week:
“60% of deployments disappoint”
– Gartner:
“70% of deployments disappoint”
Questions to Ask Your Vendors
• Do you have a productized
approach?
– Can you eliminate one-offs?
SHOW ME.
• How are traditional & hosted
services provisioned?
– Can I provision myself?
– How are prompts distributed?
– Can you back-up my reports?
Preservation of Workflow Integrity
Questions to Ask Yourself
• What best practices are at play
in my contact center?
• How well can I describe
supervisor & agent workflows?
Questions to Ask Your Vendors
•
How easy is it to “capture”
workflows, skills and
processes? SHOW ME.
•
Can this data be maintained
both on site or in a hosted
network where these processes
are safe and secure?
– Call flow logic
– Agent definitions
– Campaign definitions
•
How can processes be
maintained if traditional contact
centers are dispersed?
• How do I currently “back up”
these definitions?
Infrastructure Maintenance
Questions to Ask Yourself
Questions to Ask Your Vendors
• Do I have alternate routing?
• How much downtime in
swapping spares?
• Do I have spares for my
traditional contact center?
• What’s your back-up scheme?
• Does my hosted provider
have spares?
• What communications stay live
during failures? SHOW ME.
• How do I “piggy back” on
other contact centers or
offices for an interim period?
• What steps does an agent take
to log on to an alternate mode?
SHOW ME.
Managing Change
Questions to Ask Yourself
Questions to Ask Your Vendors
• How easily does my contact
center scale?
• Can moves, adds and
changes be done on-they-fly?
SHOW ME.
• What do I need besides a
phone & internet PC?
• How quickly can I turn on a
new campaign?
• What parts do I need for each
agent? Supervisor?
• Can I grow without shutting
down?
SHOW ME.
Predefining Contingency Workgroups
Disaster Recovery
• Natural Disasters
– Ice Storms, Earthquakes, Heat Waves, Floods, Hurricanes
– Tornadoes, Avalanches, Pestilence, Drought
• Infrastructure Disasters
– Regional Power Loss
– Water Contamination or Water Main breaks
– Gas Leaks, Traffic Grid breakdowns
• People-initiated Disasters
– Terrorism, Sabotage
– Organized Labor Strikes
Disaster Recovery
Continued…
Questions to Ask Yourself
Questions to Ask Your Vendors
• What happens if my contact
center shuts down?
• What’s your “insurance policy”
against disasters?
• If agents can’t get to work?
• How quickly can a standby
center be cut over?
• What happens in emergency
situations?
• Can agents log on from
anywhere?
• Can they do everything they
can usually do? SHOW ME.
Hedging Against Disaster
Questions to Ask Yourself
• Do I get cooperation from
carriers and hosts in creating a
“standby” contact center?
Questions to Ask Your Vendors
•
How do you pre-define Standby
Workgroups? SHOW ME.
•
How seamlessly will calls flow
during a disaster?
•
How about mapping Agent Phone
and PCs?
• How do the carriers do this?
• Can we emulate the most
optimal network solution?
– Can you pre-define agent
computers for auto-login?
– Are there “traveling profiles” for
each agent and supervisor?
Lots of information to help you with next
steps
Where to find more information
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www.ready.gov
www.disastercenter.com/abrgoals.htm
www.gdin.org
http://www.fema.gov/library/factshts.shtm
http://www.redcross.org/services/disaster/0,1082,0_
501_,00.html
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/bytopic/disasters/
http://www.thebci.org/
http://www.business-continuity-world.com/
http://www.bcpa.org/metadot/index.pl