It’s not something anyone wants to think about, but it’s high time you spent a few minutes pondering a disaster recovery answering service for your business.
Do you have a disaster recovery plan at all? If you’re like many owners of small- to medium-sized businesses, you’ve probably taken a stab at a plan or two, but gotten lost in the details. That’s ok, your answering service is here to help!
With natural catastrophes steadily on the rise since the 1980s, according to the Insurance Information Institute, you can’t afford to not have a disaster recovery plan in place right now. Now is the time, not when the power’s out and you’re ankle deep in flood water.
There is No One Season for Disaster
For many people, the word “disaster” probably brings images of killer tornadoes, drenching rains, slippery mudslides and fierce wildfires that engulf neighborhoods and towns.
For a disaster recovery answering service, a disaster certainly includes those dramatic events, but it also covers the severe ice storm that brings down the phone lines, the high winds that literally rip the power lines out of the side of your building, the bad driver who ends up plowing through your front window in the middle of the night and even the fire started by the gas explosion in the bakery next door.
Disasters, big and small, can put your business in jeopardy. Your customers may think that you’re done, it’s over and you’ll not be coming back. The last thing you need is a flood of loyal patrons going over to the competition. This is where the disaster recovery plan comes in.
Elements of a Good Disaster Recovery Plan
No matter what kind of business you run, whether it’s a gift shop or a medical office, your disaster recovery plan may actually look very similar.
Your callers want to know what has happened, how badly your facility was damaged and when you’ll be ready to help them again. If your power’s off or the telephone lines are down, you can’t provide this information quickly or to the sheer volume of people who are trying to get through.
But your answering service can. Simply call in, provide the necessary details, and they’ll do the rest. If patients have appointments that need to be rescheduled, leave instructions to reassure them that you will contact them as soon as you can to do that very thing. If there are precious items (or pets) in your keep, give owners a way to retrieve what should go home with them.
Plan For Disaster Recovery Year-Round
Because disaster can strike at any time of the year, there’s no excuse to not have a year-round disaster recovery answering service.
After all, it won’t kick into action until you need it, but if you don’t have a plan and you do need it, it’s too late to make the proper arrangements at that point. Fires, broken water lines, bad drivers and all manner of man-made and minor, localized disasters happen every single day. They may only take a week or two to clean up, but without a good disaster recovery plan, your business could feel the burn for much longer.
