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November 2008 | Volume 27 / Number 6
Special Focus

News Analysis: Contact Centers Unprepared For Disasters, Disruptions

A new and disturbing study by DMG Consulting “Business as Usual? A Benchmarking Study of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity for Contact Centers “sponsored by Empirix, reveals that contact centers are ill-prepared for disasters and for equipment failures, while preventing or minimizing them could save millions of dollars in lost revenue.

Yet a new and disturbing study by DMG Consulting “Business as Usual? A Benchmarking Study of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity for Contact Centers “sponsored by Empirix, reveals unfortunately otherwise. The report documents contact centers’ readiness to adapt to disruptions caused by internal system and process changes and benchmarks how contact centers handle disaster recovery/business continuity strategies, plans, and testing. Here are the highlights:

• Less than 37 percent of companies are confident that their operations can withstand a disaster or business disruption

• 60.2 percent of firms are not routinely testing their core contact center infrastructure. This leaves them open to    unexpected but avoidable failures




• Only 4.7 percent of firms test their disaster recovery/business continuity (DR/BC) plans monthly, leaving 95.3 percent at    risk of a serious meltdown in an emergency situation

• 20 percent of contact centers do not even have a disaster recovery plan

The most common DR/BC approach, used by nearly 31 percent of survey participants, was to conduct business as usual at a less ambitious service level agreement (SLA) levels. The most common tactic to achieve this goal, selected by 40 percent, was to failover to a remote site. Meanwhile 18 percent prioritize sales and customer service transactions, but hold off on handling other types of transactions while just over 25 percent provide only basic coverage for calls.

“Unfortunately, the majority of companies surveyed have not made adequate investments to prevent disruptions to their mission critical service infrastructure, “ states Donna Fluss, president of DMG Consulting. “They run the risk of alienating customers in their time of need.”

“It seems surprising that companies would have an evacuation plan in place, but not one that details how to keep business operations running smoothly should a disaster occur,” says Phil Odence, vice president of business development at Empirix. “We appreciate the honesty of all the survey participants and hope that this got them thinking about the importance of testing and monitoring the technology that supports their disaster recovery plans.”

Testing is key to disaster response and for operational continuity, said the report. Because contact centers use as many as 40 or 50 different systems and applications to service customers, it is essential to test every system and potential point of failure to proactively identify and resolve system issues before they can impact customers. One of the vital applications to keep operational is the ACD: if a customer interaction cannot reach the ACD, it cannot be handled by the organization.

DMG benchmarks the survey responses and defines a “leaders” category. Leading companies have well-defined disaster and contingency plans and test them on a frequent basis. They also monitor and test their core and supporting systems routinely to avoid unnecessary service disruptions. Leaders are prepared to mitigate the effects of both unavoidable disasters and system and process failures that can threaten service level agreements and the customer experience.

This study provides best practices and recommendations to help contact centers enhance their disaster recovery and business continuity plans. Here is a sample:

• Contact centers of all sizes must have a disaster recovery and business continuity plan and test them monthly

• Design the plan to keep contact center activities operational but at lower SLAs during the duration of the incident

• Develop a cost effective back-up design using a combination of network routing, automated failover, remote locations,   hosted contact center infrastructure and outsourcers

• Use automation to test mission-critical systems, processes and workflows daily. Test non-mission-critical systems,   processes, workflows and all of their integrations monthly

• Build in sufficient time to thoroughly test any changes to systems, processes and workflows

• Involve both IT and contact center business managers in planning, testing and approving test results

To obtain a complimentary copy of this report and learn how to prepare your contact center for the unexpected, visit www.empirix.com/drsurvey.

 

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