Hi folks.

Just curious to find out what disaster recovery/contingency plans people have in place within their call or contact centres. What with the increasing reliance on contact centres as a core part of modern organisations, it would seem to me that not having an effective recovery plan might just be tempting fate.

So, what (if anything) have you got in place, and how have you evaluated it? Have you ever had to use one, and how did it go?

John

Iain,

Do you want to take this?

I'm not as err... ah yes tolerant or diplomatic as you :-)

DaveA

Cheers Dave,

we have a few levels of DR depending on how diasterous the disaster is.
- Firstly if our Symposium server fails then calls are routed via default DNs on Meridian.
- If Meridian dies then we have a few distribution groups set up to send calls to the correct area.
- In both of these cases we also have the option of redirecting calls to our other office.
- Our final option is decamping to a 3rd party site (conveniently locate within a 50 mile radius of each of our offices).

This latter option is somewhat up for debate as the only time, so far, that we may have required to use it was during the BT fire in Manchester. We started off routing calls down here but then one of our other systems contracted a virus and phoned in sick (I think it was the admin side in India). This caused mass panic in the managers responsible for our DR plan (I'm sure Dave can dig out his rant from the time) and they charged about like headless chickens without making any effort to consult those who might actually know a small amount about the telephone sytems. The other side was the fact that the 3rd party site was filled by 9am on the Monday morning so we missed any chance of using the service for which we pay a substantial amount of money. Eventually we got all our call routing sorted out and as a result are reviewing our top level DR procedure.

Nice and tactful as I didn't mention any of the muppets/managers involved.

Cheers,

Iain

Our DR plan was recently overhauled and updated by myself. It was quite fun really, trying to imagine all the things that could go wrong. TV in rest room blowing up, food poisoning at Chritmas Party, Celing colapse, etc. Some more likely than others. Hopefully none will ever happen though.

It covers 3 main categories of disastor events.
1. Loss of Technology - with various plans and agreements in place with other areas in the company to get it up and running asap.
2. Loss of Staff - covering from small + tempory loss to large long term loss. Where we would borrow staff from others areas in the company to a more long term plan to recruit and train staff.
3. Loss of building - which involves the short and long term evacuation and relocation to another site.

If you don't plan for it - you can only Panic through it.

Not had to use it yet but the practice planning run throughs were fun.

See also my Recent Rambling on this subject if for some reason you missed it. Comments always welcome.

John

I'm curious to know whether the majority of plans in place for DR are just documents gathering dust on a shelf - until needed (very quickly - no doubt). Or are elements tested on a regular basis to check their robustness?

Also, Iain in one of the above comments stated "The other side was the fact that the 3rd party site was filled by 9am on the Monday morning so we missed any chance of using the service for which we pay a substantial amount of money."

Can you plan for the occupancy of your DR site by another company? and if so, how without investing in duplicate contracts?

Hi again,
Should have mentioned this in my previous post but we our DR plan is checked and updated on a monthly basis. In addition we have a meeting once a quater where we are given a scenario and have to use our plan to show how we would cope with that disaster.
In terms of the alternate location, I believe that the secondary site where we would set up operations should we loose the main building, does have contracts with other companies, however, none of these companies are based in the same town. So the likely hood of a disaster affecting both us and another company in another town is so minimal that a lottery win would be more likely. (I wish) Such a low chance of happening their is no point planning for it.
Hope this helps, I'm going to go buy a ticket.

I'm curious to know whether the majority of plans in place for DR are just documents gathering dust on a shelf - until needed (very quickly - no doubt). Or are elements tested on a regular basis to check their robustness?

At a previous employer part of the DR plan was a cascade phone list to ensure that relevant information could be distributed around management. This was tested regularly.

So I'm sitting there - Saturday morning - on the playstation. Critical point, critical level. Phone rings...

"Oh, I'm just testing the phone list"...great, thanks John.

Turn back to playstation. I'm dead.

I was mad as hell...

Regards,
Darryl
www.darrylbeckford.co.uk