Has anyone had their phones go down unexpectedly for just a few hours? If so, what did you do? We had this happen yesterday and just used our cell phones for outbound calling, but lost calls for two hours. We know Agility can bring a satellite dish for phones and/or Internet, but that is for longer term outages. Any help?
Archive for the ‘Connectivity’ Category
Short-term Phone Outage
Friday, April 24th, 2009Storm causes phone system failure-Agility is there
Friday, June 20th, 2008Today we received an e-mail from an insurance agency out of Maryland, a St. Paul Travelers member. Their phone system was “fried” in a storm last night and they were without the use of their phones. They contacted us and we provided them options, back and forth, working through what might be the best approach, they eventually (by end of day today) were able to get the phone vendor to repair the system to a usable state and would not need our services, but we had several redirection to a voicemail options as well as the use of our satellite available.
I just got off the phone with Barbara, our contact and she could not have been more impressed with Agility. She signed up less than 2 months ago, has been through orientation, completed all her lists entry on MyAgility and was extremely complimentary of her experience with us. She said things like: “Well, we sure know we went with the right company to recover us when we need it” and “Wow, you guys really make it easy on us” and “I cant wait to take this back to the Travelers group where I heard about you all and tell them about my experience, thank you so much for being there for us.”
Phone Interuption
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008We received a call from a ReadySuite member earlier this week. He had just joined the member company the previous week and was in charge of recovery planning. He had no idea what Agility does for his business, as the people with this information had left the company weeks ago.
He seemed a little frantic, spoke very fast and was trying to understand what Agility does and what his ReadySuite membership entails. I gave him a brief overview and took him online to MyAgility.
Before he quickly got off the phone, I asked him to call back when he had a few minutes, so I could formally introduce him to the benefits of membership.
Well, he called me back a day later. He told me the company’s phone system was down for seven hours yesterday and his strategy to roll over his phones failed. They lost almost a full day of communication.
I told him how Agility could have helped with the phones (I am kicking myself for not originally asking if there was an emergency, didn’t cross my mind) and he was so ecstatic!
He said “we need to input our employees and vendors (in MyAgility) right away. The alert notification would have been perfect and we sure could have utilized the call redirection to receive our calls. Who knows how many callers received a busy signal yesterday?”
This member is set up on the next MyAgility Webinar and a custom consultation call next week. He will be much more prepared the next time there is a failure and will turn to Agility for immediate assistance.
Annual plan reviews are so important – turnover is inevitable and on-going communication with Agility is crucial to response and recovery times. What are some of the things you’re doing to address phones recovery needs?
Satellite Lag?
Monday, March 31st, 2008I’ve heard the satellite phones and Internet can have problems with lag. Has anyone used them first hand?
Phone System – Can we re-route our lines during a disaster?
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008I heard on a Webinar about Agility redirecting a company’s main phone line during a power interruption. They can send inbound calls directly to voicemail or a cell phone. Has anyone done this before? What was it like?