Two business disasters you can easily avoid

Recovery from a business disaster

For the modern business, staying online and accessible to customers is one of your highest possible priorities. Customers who cannot reach you when they call are much more likely to experience dissatisfaction and seek other options. New sales may be lost, loyal customers may be confused and hurt any time your company cannot pick up the phone, in anyone’s book these situations are business disasters.

However, as rare as real disasters may be, it’s important to have a backup plan just in case something happens that could potentially wipe out your ability to answer calls in the office. With landlines and a traditional business PBX, you and your customers would be more than out of luck in the event of a real disaster.

Here’s just a couple of situations that for some businesses are all too familiar and costly.

The power goes out in your building or on your floor

By far the most common type of business communication disaster occurs when the power goes out.

The fuse on your office floor may have blown, plunging your entire floor of employees into darkness and radio-silence. In a larger localised disaster, it’s possible that the entire building or the whole block may have gone out due to damage or work on the lines deeper in.

When this happens, the phones stop and your company immediately starts losing money. Clients can’t get through. Customers can’t ask questions or call customer support. Many will get the impression that you cut off the lines on purpose, though not know why.

Fortunately, forward-thinking businesses will have a unified communications plan with disaster recover built right in. If one floor goes out, no problem. You have the tools to quickly re-route incoming calls to workstations on a floor that does have power. If the whole building or even the whole region goes out, you can re-route calls to another facility and your customers will never know the difference, allowing you to maintain your high customer service levels and maintain your brand reputation.

A flood renders your office building temporarily unusable

Floods are the single most common natural disaster here in the UK with seasonal flooding being something we’re all aware of when the clouds cover the sky. If a flood in the next year is particularly bad, there’s a high chance that office buildings can be affected.

Waters may rise through the basement and ground floor. Your office might become flooded, soaked, and temporarily unusable. It may become necessary to stay out of your office and away from your phones until the flood recedes and the place is dried out and treated for mould prevention.

In the meantime, your customers can’t reach you and your staff need to find somewhere else to convene and collaborate to provide great services. If you can’t get back on the phones and answering online messages, you might as well be out of business as far as your customers are concerned.

Again, the good news is that a built-in disaster recovery mechanism will save the day. Even if you don’t want the high cost of renting or reserving a temporary workspace elsewhere, your staff can work on-the-go, thanks to the power of cloud communications and VoIP. Having a lack of office space, shouldn’t mean a lack of ways to work.

Disaster recovery redirection

The key to avoiding situations like those above is disaster recovery.

Windsor Telecom can give your business the ability to route your already virtually-routed calls to a different set of IP handsets or even to the personal devices of your team members who can log in and begin taking calls through your standard software interface almost immediately. No matter what kind of disaster befalls your company.

Don’t let disaster strike your business. Get in touch with us today by filling in the form below and allow us to talk to you about how a complete unified communications plan can help you to prevent disaster striking your business.