Preparing for bad weather - how will you answer calls?

Of all the seasons, travelling in winter requires the most care. As a result we get a barrage of advice ranging from how to carry out checks on the car, packing additional supplies to checking how the weather may impact travel plans - if you’re able to travel at all. But far too often people find themselves in difficult situations when caught in fog, stuck at the railway station or stranded on a motorway.

Whilst it’s inconvenient to be stranded due to adverse weather, what impact does it have on organisations that rely on their workforce? In recent years the impact on the UK economy has been estimated at £470m per day when snow brings our roads, rail and air travel to a stop. Staying at home or working from another office is a good approach for staff but how can you provide customers the business as usual service that they expect. Technology such a virtual private network (VPN) allows your staff to connect to computer systems in the office, but how do they answer customer or supplier calls made to their desk number if they aren’t in the office?

Just like finding out that your old car battery cannot cope with the freezing weather the ability to divert telephone calls to any destination is something that needs to be considered before a disaster occurs. This is especially the case for fixed landline numbers that normally point directly to an office. Although they can have diverts or call forwarding applied from the internal telephone system and in some cases this is within the control of the user. In many cases such diverts need to be applied by the system administrator who may not be able to get into the office or they may be overwhelmed by the number of requests to divert calls. Therefore to maintain the service level and the valuable cash flow associated with business as usual service, one needs to build the delivery of voice services into business continuity plan.

So before you’re struck by bad weather, make sure that you are prepared for winter and check if you can divert calls to where your staff are located, no matter where they are. If you can’t there are a number of excellent services, such as smartnumbers, that give you control over of where to deliver calls to alternative locations such as home number, mobile phone or to another office.