Pandemic flu and the Contact Centre
Introduction
Hopefully the recent outbreak of swine flu will be contained and life will continue as normal for the vast majority of us. Events like this prompt organisations to consider their processes and systems to determine how the operation could continue if the work force could not get to their place of work.
We at NewVoiceMedia have been involved in contingency planning and the “pandemic flu” debate for some time. Obviously most call centres will have their own contingency plans in place for pandemic flu...as opposed to all other disasters. But for those people who would like to know a little more about the issues, and why teleworking plays such a pivotal role in a company's survival, we have just released an eight page whitepaper. It describes the unique nature of a pandemic flu, how it will disrupt operations for 12 weeks or more, and what can be done to minimise its impact on your operations. It contains information from the UK government's Influenza Pandemic Contingency Plan, including Annex J which gives advice to businesses.
Flu pandemic
Should the pandemic gain a foothold within 100 miles of their business it's probably just a matter of days before it begins to seriously affect business operations. For many companies the call centre is still a focal point of the commercial operation. A flu pandemic will affect call centres in several ways:
- The infection will strike over a rolling period of 12-15 weeks
- Agents will not be able to come into work due to illness for up to 6 weeks
- Even healthy agents may be unwilling to come into work - they may be caring for sick relatives and friends - or they may be just frightened of catching the disease.
- This will inevitably reduce the capability of the company to answer calls
- It will also affect the amount and nature of incoming traffic – depending on the type of organisation, traffic may decrease or increase, as discussed in the whitepaper.
We recommend that you include a possible pandemic in your call centre continuity plans. The free downloadable paper below explains how such a pandemic may affect your staff and customers, and offers suggestions on the types of plans and preparations that could be appropriate.
NewVoiceMedia is a leading European player in the provision of Hosted Contact Centre solutions. Our virtual call centre technology can be deployed in days and will allow your agents to work from home and to be managed as if everyone were in the same operations centre. By teleworking, agents can carry on working in the usual way for as long as possible. The NewVoiceMedia solution can be deployed as a stand-alone temporary virtual call centre while the pandemic is occurring, or support your existing infrastructure as necessary...
NewVoiceMedia Pandemic Flu Contact Centre
- Contact centre technology that gives YOU the flexibility to switch agents from working in an office to working from home
- Can be used as a standalone solution or add to your existing infrastructure.
- Homeworkers needs DDI phone or mobile and a PC with broadband connection.
- Training an agent to use our system takes under two minutes and can be performed remotely.
- Ideally we should be working with you before a pandemic strikes, in which case switching, say, a 200 agents centre would take only an hour. Integration with you CRM systems will be in place so calls can proceed as if nothing has happened.
- New systems can be rapidly deployed (in around 24 hours for a small scale operations under ideal conditions).
- The system is managed remotely using the internet - any authorised person or persons can make changes to the call plan in minutes (changing routing, messaging etc). NB It is quite likely that changes to the call plan will need to be made as the commercial situation develops.
- Business model is one of a set-up charge and then Pay-as-you-Go - so if only 51 agents use the system then you only pay for 51 people that month.
- Calls can be delivered to anywhere in the world, so we could switch a UK-based call centre to working in Ireland, USA, Australia...
- Nobody from NewVoiceMedia need visit - everything is handled over the web.
- We use multiple hosting centres that can run independently. We provide 24/7 support using homeworking staff. So we have a redundant, resilient system running at a time of crisis.
CALL US ON 0800 280 2888 for more information.
Download the free whitepaper - click the image