Babble has contingency plans in place to continue to operate as a business and to support our customers in the most unforeseeable of scenarios.
What did we do?
Given the nature of what is going on in the wider world we decided to test these plans on Wednesday and close all of our offices across the UK.
It remained a normal business day, we just wanted everybody to work from somewhere other than one of the Babble offices. We didn’t make any special plans or give our staff advance notice and we didn’t inform our customers or suppliers because the theory is that they shouldn’t notice anything was different.
This was an opportunity for us to learn about ourselves and a test of our ability to react quickly, collaborate, communicate, be flexible and demonstrate that the solutions we deliver and deploy ourselves are best in class and enable organisations to operate as if everything was normal, whatever the situation.
So, what happened?
Honestly, we have nothing to report. Every member of staff was able to work as if they were at their office with no limitations. Every task was completed, every team communicated and collaborated, and our support desk was fully operational servicing our customers.
Interestingly it appears nobody externally noticed we weren’t in the office. Mid-afternoon, by coincidence, we sent out our latest batch of NPS email to the next segment of our customers. As I look through all the responses, there is no indication we didn’t deliver the service they are used to.
I wish I had more to say. But the day was quiet and without incident.
How did we do it?
Simply put, we use what we sell all day, every day, our expertise in making this work is what gave me the confidence.
- Comms – Microsoft Teams with Enterprise Voice, allowing collaboration and communication
- Contact – Five9 cloud-based contact centre, allowing agents to work as normal wherever they chose.
- Cyber – Our approach & the solutions Babble sells, delivers, supports & uses mean that anyone can do anything from anywhere, at any time. We have no single point of dependency and of course everything’s secure.
This is about Business Continuity
Every business should have a Business Continuity plan, because as we have all learned, none of us have any idea what is around the corner. We live in interesting times, disruption is the new norm, the better prepared we all are the more likely we are to be able to deal with whatever is thrown at us.
Recent events have bought this to everyone’s attention, a single employee with a positive indication means that nobody else can work in that office until there has been a deep clean and mass self-isolation.
With the right tools, employees are able to work as normal from anywhere they access the internet, delivering business continuity in the event of an employee becoming infected.
Obviously, technology will not guarantee that businesses are completely insulated from disruption, but it will mean that the very best can be made of a very difficult situation.