Contact Centers with Nine Lives Topics

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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

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Business Continuity
Definition
Source The Business Continuity Institute
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What can be Adversewikipedia.org
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

• 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
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Essential Constants

• Predictability
• Fewer surprises
• Reliability
• Working no matter what

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Predictability Reducing Surprises
Questions to Ask Yourself
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?

• 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

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Preservation of Workflow Integrity
Questions to Ask Yourself
Questions to Ask Your Vendors

• What best practices are at play in my contact
  center?
• How well can I describe supervisor agent
  workflows?
• How do I currently back up these definitions?

• 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?

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Infrastructure Maintenance
Questions to Ask Yourself
Questions to Ask Your Vendors

• How much downtime in swapping spares?
• Whats your back-up scheme?
• What communications stay live during failures?
  SHOW ME.
• What steps does an agent take to log on to an
  alternate mode?SHOW ME.

• Do I have alternate routing?
• Do I have spares for my traditional contact
  center?
• Does my hosted provider have spares?
• How do I piggy back on other contact centers or
  offices for an interim period?

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Managing Change
Questions to Ask Your Vendors
Questions to Ask Yourself

• Can moves, adds and changes be done
  on-they-fly?SHOW ME.
• What parts do I need for each agent? Supervisor?
• Can I grow without shutting down?SHOW ME.

• How easily does my contact center scale?
• What do I need besides a phone internet PC?
• How quickly can I turn on a new campaign?

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Predefining Contingency Workgroups
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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

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Disaster Recovery
Continued
Questions to Ask Your Vendors
Questions to Ask Yourself

• What happens if my contact center shuts down?
• If agents cant get to work?
• What happens in emergency situations?

• Whats your insurance policy against disasters?
• How quickly can a standby center be cut over?
• Can agents log on from anywhere?
• Can they do everything they can usually do? SHOW
  ME.

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Hedging Against Disaster
Questions to Ask Yourself
Questions to Ask Your Vendors

• Do I get cooperation from carriers and hosts in
  creating a standby contact center?
• How do the carriers do this?
• Can we emulate the most optimal network solution?

• How do you pre-define Standby Workgroups? SHOW
  ME.
• How seamlessly will calls flow during a
  disaster?
• How about mapping Agent Phone and PCs?
• Can you pre-define agent computers for
  auto-login?
• Are there traveling profiles for each agent and
  supervisor?

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Lots of information to help you with next steps
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Where to find more information

• 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