Call Center Scheduling Featured Article
Cloud, WFM Can Help with Disaster Recovery
When disaster strikes, good people and organizations mobilize and do what they can to help out. Hurricane Florence is just one of the most recent disasters in the U.S. And, in addition to first responders and good samaritans, Duke Energy (News - Alert) has been one of the entities working to help people recover from it.
To give you a sense of the death and destruction from this event, The News & Observer reported yesterday that the death toll in North Carolina from Florence now totals 33. And CBS News last week reported there were nine dead in South Carolina, and two human lives were lost in Virginia related to the weather event. Millions of animals also perished during the Hurricane Florence disaster.
There was lots of property damage as well, of course. Moody estimates the economic cost of Florence ranges from $38 billion to $50 billion.
Hundreds of thousands of people were also without power following the storm. To help these individuals, Duke Energy had more than 20,000 employees in the Carolinas working to help with restoration efforts.
It’s been an all-hands-on-deck situation for Duke Energy. In addition to leveraging its usual contact center and customer service staff, the company had non-call center employees help address the large volume of calls. Those individuals came from a variety of departments and disciplines, including accountants, engineers, and lawyers.
The need for a company like Duke to quickly call on employees of all stripes to help out with the recovery effort demonstrates the importance of being able to schedule employees quickly and easy, and to outfit them with access to call center resources. Workforce management software and cloud-based contact center solutions can allow for that.
Edited by Maurice Nagle