Why bad weather is bad news for business (and how you can mitigate the risk)
We had a picturesque display of snow last week, and in some places, the country fell into chaos again: snow and ice caused massive disruption to planes,trains and automobiles in England and Wales. That left a lot of people unable to get to work on time, their email unattended, their phones unanswered.
That’s also a lot of unhappy customers trying to get in touch with you.
This is certainly not a one-off. A few weeks ago we were battling tube strikes and track failures at Waterloo. A few weeks before that a chemical alert closed the M3 and there was what The Telegraph called “world-wide airport chaos” as check-in systems crashed.
None of these things are the kind of disasters you’d make Bruce Willis movies about, but they can do serious damage to your business. A tube strike, some snowflakes or somebody accidentally severing essential communications cabling can be devastating. It can mean the difference between you being there for your customers or losing them to better-prepared rivals.
There’s a better way
Imagine being stuck at home because the snow’s closed your child’s school. No problem. To your customers, you’re in the office: your business number works on your landline, your mobile or your softphone app.
Or maybe you’re stuck at Tebay Services waiting for the snow ploughs to clear the slip roads. Again, no problem. You can work remotely and run conference calls while you sip your coffee.
The trick is to bring the cloud to your communications in the form of hosted voice services.
The benefits from a disaster recovery perspective are obvious, but hosted voice services are useful when things aren’t hitting the fan too. For example, they enable you to add new employees in small or huge numbers quickly — handy during seasonal peaks or other times of high demand — or to quickly reconfigure your call handling to meet a specific business objective, such as a new service launch or a period of peak demand. Removing the need to purchase fixed capacity on-premise voice switches, giving you a solution that can grow or shrink with your business needs.
Hosted voice services can also be helpful for data security and regulatory compliance. If you’re in an environment where call recording is mandatory, the platform can provide that as well, no matter what kind of phone or app is being used. A single administration system that’s easy for your IT team to manage reduces site visits and enables you to provide best-in-class communication services across your organisation.
Ultimately, hosted voice services offer something very valuable: peace of mind. They are there whenever you need them and won’t cost you when you don’t, it keeps your data safe and your people safer, and it brings extra flexibility to your business.
Not only that, hosted voice can also help you to deliver improved customer service, even if your staff are working from home, stuck in snowdrifts, or dealing with the unexpected arrival of Godzilla in Godalming.
Takeaways:
- Disasters needn’t mean meteors or Godzilla. Bad weather or cut cables can leave your business stranded.
- In this fiercely competitive climate, rivals will happily take the calls you can’t answer.
- Hosted voice services bring cloud flexibility to your communications.
- Hosted voice facilitates professional contact no matter where you are.
- Don’t let disasters risk your data security or employees’ privacy.
See how hosted voice could reduce risk, add flexibility, and make life easier for your business.
Click HERE
