“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 Adversewikipedia.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 Hypernova1.13 Impact event

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

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

Essential Constants

• Predictability– Fewer surprises

• Reliability– Working no matter what

Predictability: Reducing Surprises

• 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”

• 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?

Questions to Ask Yourself Questions to Ask Your Vendors

Preservation of Workflow Integrity

• 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?

Questions to Ask Yourself Questions to Ask Your Vendors

Infrastructure Maintenance

• 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?

• How much downtime in swapping spares?

• What’s 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.

Questions to Ask Yourself Questions to Ask Your Vendors

Managing Change

• 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?

• 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.

Questions to Ask Yourself Questions to Ask Your Vendors

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

• What happens if my contact center shuts down?

• If agents can’t get to work?

• What happens in emergency situations?

• What’s 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.

Questions to Ask Yourself Questions to Ask Your Vendors

Continued…

Hedging Against Disaster

• 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?

Questions to Ask Yourself Questions to Ask Your Vendors

Lots of information to help you with next steps

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