What happens if your company's normal operations are suddenly disrupted? Do you have a plan in place to help minimize the issue and help return everything to business as usual as quick as possible?
Business continuity plans are very helpful in mitigating any downtime within a company whenever an unexpected situation arises. These plans can include communication and notification strategies for both clients and employees, ensuring that the situation is properly communicated and everyone has access to the most up-to-date information.
Notify clients of delays
Communication is key, especially whenever your company is experiencing any customer-facing issues that could impact the level of service they receive. As long as your clients remain in the loop they are less likely to become frustrated with the company and will forgive any minor delays.
Sending your clients notifications whenever issues come up is simple with a mass notification system that can send messages to clients via a variety of different methods. Ensure that your clients receive messages in a timely manner by sending one to each of the communication methods for which you have their contact information. Alternatively, you can choose to send the notification to each client's preferred method of communication that you would have asked of them when they first signed up to received messages from you.
Send quick surveys to receive status updates
Your company's management team will need to be kept informed regarding resolution efforts. An easy way for them to do this is to send the team members working on fixing the issue a quick update survey to check in on progress made. Even a simple, one question survey can provide managers with the information they need in order to make a decision regarding next steps to be taken.
Survey software that allows for multiple submissions is also useful to include in a company business continuity plan as managers won't have to send multiple surveys that take up valuable restoration time. The team members can simply keep responding to the same survey whenever there is an update to be reported and the survey report will be updated automatically in real time.
Include a call tree option for clients
What about those clients who have not registered to receive notifications from your company? How can you provide them with the information they need regarding progress and estimated restoration time?
An interactive voice response (IVR) system can help distribute important information to your clients without you needed to divert valuable resources away from working toward the resolution of the issue. Depending on the dial pad number the caller selects, they will be provided with information that you have configured in advance. For example, your IVR can include pre-recorded announcements regarding the status of the issue as well as an option to transfer the caller to the appropriate department if they have any additional concerns. Other options may include hanging up, or connecting the caller to a sub-IVR menu with other choices to choose from.
EmergHub can help with your business continuity plan
SimplyCast has recently released our emergency suite of tools, its new emergency communication platform that is able to assist with all of the above processes and more to enhance your business continuity plan. With automated communication capabilities and the functionality to help you plan your strategies in advance, your company can notify clients quickly and effectively, while also ensuring that the situation gets resolved as quickly as possible.
Click the button below to request a demo of the platform!
