A disaster can strike at any time and whether it's expected or unexpected you need to be prepared. Call centers are a particularly vulnerable part of a business. When customers call you, they expect someone to answer the other line. They don't know that you can't assist them because of a blackout or because a huge storm just knocked out your phone lines.

And, even if they do, they may not have much sympathy about an ice storm affecting your center in Michigan when they live in Florida.

This is why it's crucial that your center has a disaster recovery plan in place before a disaster hits. Being prepared will help your call center rebound faster, whether your issues are maintaining data or making sure that agents are able to keep assisting customers.

"There are three main issues that call centers must think about when preparing a disaster recovery strategy," says Robert Engel, principal with Engel Picasso (Albuquerque, NM), a site selection and consulting firm. "The most important thing is to have a commitment to the idea of having a strategic disaster recovery plan. A lot of times, rather than really committing to having a disaster recovery plan as a companywide program, companies focus on one specific kind of disaster and respond with a quick fix."

Once you decide to develop a strategic plan, Engel advises that your next step should be to establish a team of people from different parts of your company so that all aspects of your business are covered, such as technology, facilities, marketing, customer service, training departments and human resources.

"The third step is to establish the categories and types of potential disasters," says Engel. "The most common problems that people deal with are either simple power-related issues or simple weather-related issues. However, there are also many other kinds of disasters, such as an unexpected influx in business and not having an alternative to handle an overload of your systems could be a potential disaster.

"It's not only the call center that needs to be involved in disaster recovery but also the management of the company that operates the call center," he says. "Sometimes a disaster recovery plan might involve building a second center as a way of protecting yourself in case something happens and this is only something you can do with the cooperation of the rest of the company."

Another essential part of your plan should be to determine how critical it is for your call center or any other elements of your organization to remain in business during a major disaster, like a fire or flood. "There are many services like tech support, which could potentially be out of business for one or two days without having any real negative impact on a company's business," says Engel. "On the other hand, for an inbound collections center, every minute it's out of business means instant loss of revenue. The issue is how important is that particular call center to the profitability of the company and what are the potential losses that it could suffer from a disaster."

In this article, we'll look at call centers that have decided to contract with disaster recovery firms, which are companies that provide facilities where you can relocate agents to handle calls temporarily. These firms also usually offer mobile facilities that can be set up in your parking lot, for example, or at another remote site. Aside from temporary centers, disaster recovery firms allow you to maintain a backup of your customer data.

There are other disaster recovery options, such as redirecting calls to an outsourcer. However, depending on how in-depth your company's products or services are, this option may only be practical if your call center already uses an outsourcer in conjunction with an in-house center or if your customers call with basic queries. Otherwise, an outsourcer's agents wouldn't have sufficient training to handle calls that are very technical or business specific.

Comdisco Helps EcoLab Recover From Record Flood

In April 1997, EcoLab's Pest Elimination division, located in Grand Forks, SD, found itself in the midst of a record flood, which eventually crested at 54.4 feet, nearly twice the flood stage of 28 feet. The flood caused more than one billion dollars in damage within the Grand Forks area. EcoLab provides pest elimination services to commercial business, such as hotels and restaurants, nationwide. The division's headquarters and call center is located within the same facility in Grand Forks.

The center is open from 7 am to 9 pm during weekdays and from 9 am to 6 pm on weekends, Central time. EcoLab has about 40 call center employees who work different shifts.

Agents answer approximately 5,000 calls per day from customers, which typically include customers who are interested in contracting EcoLab's services and customers calling to verify or reschedule appointments. Agents also answer calls from EcoLab's field service specialists who are located nationwide. Customers can leave messages for their particular field service specialists through the call center and these specialists retrieve the messages by using the call center's IVR system.

Around mid-April of 1997, the Grand Forks community began to prepare for predicted flooding of the Red River caused by a record winter snowfall and spring rains. EcoLab's employees built a three-foot high sandbag wall around the building, which was located one mile from the river. "At the time, we had a low level building that housed our critical functions," says Cindy Kuster, IS support manager for the EcoLab Pest Elimination division. "About a week before the river was expected to crest, we moved some of our functions out of the lower level into different areas of the building."

On April 16, 1997, EcoLab realized that the level of flooding was going to exceed expectations and called its business recovery partner, Comdisco (Rosemont, IL), to put it on alert. As things got worse and the level of water increased, the company declared disaster on April 18. That morning, the company began to prepare to move its call center operations to Comdisco's business recovery site located in Minnetonka, MN, which is about a five-hour drive from EcoLab's facility. A few supervisors, managers, telecom analysts and a group of agents drove to Minnetonka so that they would be available to begin answering calls from the business recovery center the following morning.

During the rest of the day, the EcoLab call center continued to operate but it closed a few hours early, at 5 pm. After 5 pm, the pest elimination calls were forwarded to the EcoLab Institution in St. Paul, MN, another one of the company's divisions. The agents in the EcoLab Institution center temporarily handled the calls until 11 pm that evening, which is when the Pest Elimination division usually closes on weekdays.

Kuster remained at the Grand Forks site until Saturday morning. "From the Friday morning when we decided that we were going to leave, to Saturday morning when I left, things had gotten tremendously worse," she says. "On Saturday morning [the city] realized that the water was going to top over all the dikes and they began evacuating the area." Grand Forks' 50,000 residents were all ordered to evacuate.

A disaster can strike at any time and whether it's expected or unexpected you need to be prepared. Call centers are a particularly vulnerable part of a business. When customers call you, they expect someone to answer the other line. They don't know that you can't assist them because of a blackout or because a huge storm just knocked out your phone lines.

And, even if they do, they may not have much sympathy about an ice storm affecting your center in Michigan when they live in Florida.

This is why it's crucial that your center has a disaster recovery plan in place before a disaster hits. Being prepared will help your call center rebound faster, whether your issues are maintaining data or making sure that agents are able to keep assisting customers.

"There are three main issues that call centers must think about when preparing a disaster recovery strategy," says Robert Engel, principal with Engel Picasso (Albuquerque, NM), a site selection and consulting firm. "The most important thing is to have a commitment to the idea of having a strategic disaster recovery plan. A lot of times, rather than really committing to having a disaster recovery plan as a companywide program, companies focus on one specific kind of disaster and respond with a quick fix."

Once you decide to develop a strategic plan, Engel advises that your next step should be to establish a team of people from different parts of your company so that all aspects of your business are covered, such as technology, facilities, marketing, customer service, training departments and human resources.

"The third step is to establish the categories and types of potential disasters," says Engel. "The most common problems that people deal with are either simple power-related issues or simple weather-related issues. However, there are also many other kinds of disasters, such as an unexpected influx in business and not having an alternative to handle an overload of your systems could be a potential disaster.

"It's not only the call center that needs to be involved in disaster recovery but also the management of the company that operates the call center," he says. "Sometimes a disaster recovery plan might involve building a second center as a way of protecting yourself in case something happens and this is only something you can do with the cooperation of the rest of the company."

Another essential part of your plan should be to determine how critical it is for your call center or any other elements of your organization to remain in business during a major disaster, like a fire or flood. "There are many services like tech support, which could potentially be out of business for one or two days without having any real negative impact on a company's business," says Engel. "On the other hand, for an inbound collections center, every minute it's out of business means instant loss of revenue. The issue is how important is that particular call center to the profitability of the company and what are the potential losses that it could suffer from a disaster."

In this article, we'll look at call centers that have decided to contract with disaster recovery firms, which are companies that provide facilities where you can relocate agents to handle calls temporarily. These firms also usually offer mobile facilities that can be set up in your parking lot, for example, or at another remote site. Aside from temporary centers, disaster recovery firms allow you to maintain a backup of your customer data.

There are other disaster recovery options, such as redirecting calls to an outsourcer. However, depending on how in-depth your company's products or services are, this option may only be practical if your call center already uses an outsourcer in conjunction with an in-house center or if your customers call with basic queries. Otherwise, an outsourcer's agents wouldn't have sufficient training to handle calls that are very technical or business specific.

Comdisco Helps EcoLab Recover From Record Flood

In April 1997, EcoLab's Pest Elimination division, located in Grand Forks, SD, found itself in the midst of a record flood, which eventually crested at 54.4 feet, nearly twice the flood stage of 28 feet. The flood caused more than one billion dollars in damage within the Grand Forks area. EcoLab provides pest elimination services to commercial business, such as hotels and restaurants, nationwide. The division's headquarters and call center is located within the same facility in Grand Forks.

The center is open from 7 am to 9 pm during weekdays and from 9 am to 6 pm on weekends, Central time. EcoLab has about 40 call center employees who work different shifts.

Agents answer approximately 5,000 calls per day from customers, which typically include customers who are interested in contracting EcoLab's services and customers calling to verify or reschedule appointments. Agents also answer calls from EcoLab's field service specialists who are located nationwide. Customers can leave messages for their particular field service specialists through the call center and these specialists retrieve the messages by using the call center's IVR system.

Around mid-April of 1997, the Grand Forks community began to prepare for predicted flooding of the Red River caused by a record winter snowfall and spring rains. EcoLab's employees built a three-foot high sandbag wall around the building, which was located one mile from the river. "At the time, we had a low level building that housed our critical functions," says Cindy Kuster, IS support manager for the EcoLab Pest Elimination division. "About a week before the river was expected to crest, we moved some of our functions out of the lower level into different areas of the building."

On April 16, 1997, EcoLab realized that the level of flooding was going to exceed expectations and called its business recovery partner, Comdisco (Rosemont, IL), to put it on alert. As things got worse and the level of water increased, the company declared disaster on April 18. That morning, the company began to prepare to move its call center operations to Comdisco's business recovery site located in Minnetonka, MN, which is about a five-hour drive from EcoLab's facility. A few supervisors, managers, telecom analysts and a group of agents drove to Minnetonka so that they would be available to begin answering calls from the business recovery center the following morning.

During the rest of the day, the EcoLab call center continued to operate but it closed a few hours early, at 5 pm. After 5 pm, the pest elimination calls were forwarded to the EcoLab Institution in St. Paul, MN, another one of the company's divisions. The agents in the EcoLab Institution center temporarily handled the calls until 11 pm that evening, which is when the Pest Elimination division usually closes on weekdays.

Kuster remained at the Grand Forks site until Saturday morning. "From the Friday morning when we decided that we were going to leave, to Saturday morning when I left, things had gotten tremendously worse," she says. "On Saturday morning the city realized that the water was going to top over all the dikes and they began evacuating the area." Grand Forks' 50,000 residents were all ordered to evacuate.