Planning for Outages: How to Fool Proof Your Business

No business is immune to the occasional power or network outage, but some are better prepared than others. Even a brief network or power outage can cause major disruptions for businesses that rely on electricity to keep operations running. A 2021 survey conducted by ITIC among global corporations revealed that one hour

of downtime costs 90% of the respondents over $301,000 in lost revenues. Almost half of those surveyed have accumulated more than $1 million in losses due to downtime costs. Businesses must learn to mitigate these outages to ensure business continuity and prevent significant losses.

Impact of Outages on Businesses

Businesses are increasingly reliant on technology to operate. However, this reliance on technology can also leave companies vulnerable to power outages. Outages affect employees, product and service quality, and customers. Here are some of the drastic impacts of outages directly involving customers:

1. Lost Revenues

You cannot run your business if your network is down. When customers can’t reach you, they won’t wait for your business to go back up. They’d switch to a competitor the moment there’s a delay.

2. Damaged Reputation

If customers can’t contact your business due to an outage, they might think you’re unreliable and not trustworthy. They think you won’t be there when they need your business the most. Businesses that provide services such as IT support, property management, and health services rely on round-the-clock customer service so they can serve clients anytime they’re needed.

3. Dissatisfied Customers

Customers who suddenly lose access to your services will complain and become disgruntled. Your business downtime affects them, too, and if you provide business services, then their business suffers along with yours.

4. Penalties

To secure customer loyalty, most businesses would guarantee that customers wouldn’t experience service interruption due to outages. While there are no 100% guarantees, your business could get penalized if your downtime affects customers repeatedly.

Ways to Prevent Outages

Even a brief outage can cause significant disruptions, so businesses must exhaust all means to prevent them. Here are several ways to do so:

1. Have a backup power connection

Prevent power outages by using an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) as a backup battery source for your most critical equipment. While they don’t last long, they provide a continuous power source in the event of a power outage and can cover the minutes it takes to get backup generators running.

2. Consider a call centre redundancy

Make sure customers can always contact you by implementing a contact centre redundancy. This involves placing servers in geographically distant locations and using different network providers and carriers. Redundancy ensures operations keep running during a planned or unexpected outage.

3. Check for internal and external system weaknesses

Preventing outages involves understanding what can cause them. Check for internal and external threats regularly.

4. Invest in enterprise-level network infrastructure

Consider investing in enterprise-level network connections, even if you are a small business. The amount you save from using lower-grade hardware is minimal compared to what you’ll lose in the event of downtime. In recent years, the cost of enterprise-level network connections has also become more affordable, allowing many small businesses to enjoy its benefits.

Prevention Can Save You Millions

An outage can cause severe losses and damage when running a successful business. Customers are dissatisfied, employees lose productivity, and the company loses revenues. While there’s no way to eliminate outages, you can always prevent them from happening.

Consider the preventive suggestions above, and you could save your business millions. Get in touch with On Call Centre today for a call centre always there to answer your customers’ calls.

At On Call Centre , we deliver exceptional customer support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year—sometimes 366. On Call Centre has been providing tailored, fluently French/English bilingual answering services and call centre services to small business owners (professionals, trades) and customer support departments (government, high tech, property management, healthcare, emergency clients) serving Ottawa , Montreal and Toronto —and all over Canada —for almost 50 years.