Category: Carrier Services

Putting a natural disaster plan together can be a daunting process – it’s time-consuming and daunting. However, anyone who has experienced a crisis would probably agree that having a plan in place helps to ensure the least possible negative impact for the business.

One of the most important tools of your business is the phone system. It’s a requirement in order for you to get the help needed as well as ensure the safety of the employees and the business. If the dial tone is lost, the first part of the response efforts are hindered significantly.

Phones and Emergencies

While we usually think of a natural disaster crisis as something like a flood, earthquake, or a fire, smaller events like a water leak or a robbery can be equally devastating to businesses. When critical business elements like the phones are compromised, not only is productivity lost, the costs against the business begin to escalate rapidly.

The Importance of a Crisis Plan and Communication Solution

FEMA reports that 40% of businesses who become victim to a natural disaster are never able to reopen, and 25% fail the first year after that crisis occurs. Successful businesses today understand the importance of preparing for the worst even if the worst seems unlikely to occur. If crisis strikes, employees need to understand what’s happening, nearby businesses need to be contacted, and emergency response groups may need to respond for assistance.

Creating Your Crisis Communication Plan

When developing your crisis communication solution, there are five important elements:

1. Detailed Communication Plan: This part of the plan should define exactly how the organization will communicate with each other regarding the crisis. It should focus on the purpose of the communication, who’ll be in charge of activating it, and the tools and procedures needed.
2. Crisis Communication Team: The team of people who will be responsible for the gathering of information about the crisis and reporting it to interested individuals and the media. Specific roles should be defined such as a spokesperson, who monitors both the internal communication as well as any backups for those roles.
3. Prepared Responses: Consider the many possible crisis situations your business could potentially experience and develop some basic responses that can be used immediately after the crisis occurs, or adjusted slightly during an emergency.
4. Internal Communications Process: In this area of the plan, you should outline how employees will receive information about what’s happening. The plan should also define how employees should respond if the phone system is no longer available. This area should include hard copies of all the media and social media policies.
5. Important Contacts: A response team should not need to look around for the phone numbers of people who need to be contacted. This area of the plan includes the phone numbers and contact information for the team members. Examples include the police/fire departments, health organizations, and helpful evacuation centers or resources.

ShoreTel Sky Communication Solution

With all the elements involved in a crisis, having your phone system down isn’t a welcomed issue to an already extremely stressful situation. Although no system is completely disaster-proof, phone systems like ShoreTel Sky provide features to help ensure your plan is executed effectively.

ShoreTel Sky IP phone systems offer cost-effective communication solutions to help prevent the loss of connectivity during a crisis.

Safety Features Include:

• Server Backup: We offer multiple options for server backup so customers are always able to manage the system and use the advanced features.
• Double-Take: This feature provides a backup virtual server to another location using a WAN connection connected to the primary server.
• ShoreTel Design: Sound architecture and applications are the backbone of the ShoreTel Sky solution. The design includes N+1 redundancy and switch-based hardware for highest availability.

Investing the time into developing your company’s crisis communication solution is an important element of the stability of your organization. If the business does face a natural disaster or crisis, you will be prepared to weather the storm as it’s happening as well as the important recovery period.

You’re a small business owner who knows you need to start reaping the benefits that come with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). You also know the old way of analog phone lines and expensive equipment just doesn’t make sense for your business anymore. But there are so many choices out there today, you must evaluate your options so you select the right provider for your particular business.

Here are some tips to help you begin your VoIP comparison:

Tip #1: Know Your Needs

Modern phone systems can do pretty much anything outside of making you a cheeseburger, but that doesn’t mean you need every feature available.  Typically, features cost money, so it’s wise to invest resources into options that are going to deliver the largest ROI as far as productivity is concerned. Evaluate the features you will actually use for day-to-day operations, and if the product listing offers services you won’t use, you may want to lower the budget.

Tip #2: Ask Questions

There are so many VoIP providers out there today, which means some of them are reliable providers and others are not. To weed them out, ask some questions. Start by focusing on their ability and infrastructure to support the phone system. Their hardware and software should be robust, secure, and adaptable to change.

Here are some commonly asked support questions:

• How is the network infrastructure structured? (Who’s the owner, the service technician and who should be contacted with issues)
• What is the redundancy structure?
•  What are the recovery processes?
• Do you have a softswitch? (Software that’s used to bridge a network with the VoIP services)
• Are there any third party services?
• How will we be notified of new features?
• What is the process of getting a system implemented?

Tip #3: Find Current Customers

The best recommendation for a business is a current customer, and the same is the case with VoIP service providers. Identify some businesses similar to yours in in size and ask them who their provider is and what they like or don’t like about them. Also ask about any challenges they’ve had with their provider and how they’ve overcome them.

Tip #4: Know The Support Process

When a system goes down, your top priority is figuring out how you can get things back up and running as quickly as possible. You want to know exactly who you will need to call to get the situation resolved promptly and to your expectations. Providers should be clear about whether or not they offer 24/7 customer service or if they have another recovery process in place for off hours.

Providers may also offer a service level agreement (SLA). SLA’s confirm in writing the level of service they will deliver as well as how they are prepared to compensate you if they are somehow unable to meet that level of service. Also, ask for statistics regarding performance and reliability.