The Importance of Disaster Recovery Planning

The Importance of Disaster Recovery Planning

Any type of call center should make disaster recovery planning an important part of the business.  Before the doors are even open for business, this type of plan should be developed.  Initially, trying to develop such a plan for call centers, especially those that use the automatic call distribution system proved a serious challenge but with hard work and brainstorming, new ideas were discussed and plans developed.

Any call center without a disaster recovery planning system in place should have one implemented immediately.  To begin, professionals who create such plans would come in and do an assessment so procedures could be outlined.  From there, general responsibilities would be summarized to help determine the different actions required for monitoring recovery plans, making modifications, getting approvals, and then overseeing operations.

With disaster recovery planning, specific individuals and a director would be assigned.  These people would each have specific tasks for getting operations within the call center back up and running should a disaster occur.  The professional would also help determine the amount of time required for recovery and ultimately, create a master plan that would be taught and then used by the appropriate people within the organization.

Some of the specifics associated with disaster recovery planning and call centers is to have a plan of action for everything affected.  For instance, backup considerations would include detailed guidelines for choosing and using the best backup strategy for the call center, as well as systems and other components of the operation.  Take fire as an example.  With disaster recovery planning, a process would help determine the best type of fire suppression system, the areas of the call center where the system would installed and even protocols for preventing fire in the first place.

Disaster recovery planning would also involve loss of power.  Obviously, the building itself but more importantly, the computer systems must have some type of redundancy in place so if power were lost, there would be no downtime.  Vital records, recorded phone conversations, and other documentation would need to be stored in a secure method and then be retrievable quickly in case of disaster.

A call center would also need physical and logical security measures in place for disaster recovery planning.  This means having someone on-site, 24 hours a day to monitor and control the comings and goings of visitors but also security for computer systems, documentation, and so on.  Disaster recovery planning is serious business and something that a professional should handle.  This way, nothing is missed and the call center is fully protected.