Telecoms Disaster Recovery – How to take control Inbound telephone calls are the life blood of most businesses; yet very few Companies have a pre-defined disaster recovery plan. Being unable to either receive or efficiently handle calls can only lead to lost sales, lost revenue and lost customers. Most commonly businesses will have geographic telephone numbers pre-fixed 01 or 02. These will be delivered from the local exchange across either analogue or ISDN lines. If you have a line issue then you can call your Service Provide and as part of the fault reporting process request all calls to be diverted to another number such as a mobile or another landline. Let’s face it, unless you are fortunate enough to have a second multi line site; delivering all calls to a single mobile is really a “sticking plaster” fix. Worse still, the issue may not be a line fault. It may be a telephone system hardware issue, a power cut, a fire alarm or just bad weather stopping you from opening the office. Arranging a divert then becomes an extremely difficult process as the Faults department will often refer you to Sales who in turn have to raise orders which have lead times. All in all this is an extremely frustrating process especially when you are losing business and giving your valued customers poor service. Many customers have overcome this by using Non-Geographic numbers such as 0800, 0845 and 0870; more recently 0844, 0871 and 0333. These can be delivered to any landline or mobile number hence enhancing the ease of arranging diverts, especially in a “non-fault” scenario. In many cases there will still be a lead time to initiate and the calls will still only be delivered to a single number. However, Non-Geographic numbers are delivered from an “intelligent” network which can provide pre-defined disaster recovery routing plans that can be deployed within minutes rather than hours or days. Not only can you deliver your calls to multiple sites or numbers, you can also have pre-set voicemail messages to keep your customers informed. “That’s great” I hear you say, “But I don’t have a Non-Geographic number! I have been advertising the same 01603 Norwich number for 30 years and all my customers know it!” Well that’s OK, it can be ported to the same Non-Geographic network and receive the same benefits. This doesn’t necessarily mean moving to a VoIP solution as you can retain your analogue or ISDN lines on your existing system with “dummy” numbers. Now you can seriously look at efficient Disaster Recovery options such as mapping DDI numbers to individual’s mobile numbers and so on. This also opens up a whole raft of new benefits such splitting calls between sites based on a percentage of calls or number of lines. You can route callers based on their CLI; i.e. callers from 01603 are answered at your Norwich office and from 0207 at your London Office. Also, you have now ensured that you can keep your number even if you move to a different exchange. Even DDI numbers can be retained and mapped correctly to individuals without the need for change. This is a major benefit as the standard service for Geographic DDI numbers is a simple message that asks callers to dial a single number. Now, not many things in life are free and setting up this type of solution is no different. However, you may be surprised how little this can cost; especially when compared to the potential loss of business if you don’t! Using the intelligent call routing services of a Non Geographic network, coupled with a hosted VoIP solution really starts to build a powerful solution for any business. Not only can you instigate disaster recovery plans by making a simple quick phone call, you can now just log on from anywhere you have an internet connection and its business as usual. These are not “off the shelf” products so please feel free to call Kevin Cooper at Breakwater IT to see if a solution can be built for your Company.
