New contact centre report reveals worrying gap in disaster recovery

Four in 10 contact centres do not test their disaster recovery plans, reveals a new report from Dimension Data, which surveyed over 200 contact centres across the world. Despite the much publicised hype surrounding the real threat from global terrorism, the Merchants Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report indicates a concerning level of exposure.

A staggering 10% of all contact centres surveyed admitted they were yet to devise a suitable disaster recovery plan in the event of their centre experiencing total site disruption. Given that the contact centre is often a business-critical operation and the first point of contact to the customer, with more than a quarter (27%) being manned by agents 24x7x365, the lack of business continuity planning should be a concern to the industry.

European companies were surprisingly the worst offenders with less than half (46%) claiming to have a contact centre disaster recovery plan that had been tested. Africa fared only slightly better with just over half (51.4%) stating they had a tested recovery plan. The report highlighted North America as being the most prepared for any potential disaster, with eight out of ten North American businesses (79.5%) having tested their disaster recovery plans and the only region where no respondents claimed to have no contingency plan in place.

Three-quarters of contact centres (75%) are taking advantage of hi-tech security systems such as swipe cards or keypads for entry of authorised employees into the contact centre. One in five (18%) rely on a manned security desk and only 5% employ no security system at all. At an IT level, more care is being taken with 88% of centres having backup plans that cover serious faults to their telephony systems, while 82% have similar plans for their LAN and desktop applications. This is a dramatic increase from 1999`s figures, where only 5% claimed to have telephony backup and under a quarter (24%) had backup for LAN and desktop applications.

Mike Fairon, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Customer Interactive Solutions (CIS) at Dimension Data, said: "Although it is good to see that more businesses are taking the issue of disaster recovery seriously, it is nonetheless still astounding that one in ten contact centres across the globe are yet to devise a recovery plan. The contact centre typically houses a high concentration of sensitive and business-critical customer and company information. Those businesses that do not have an effective plan in place are putting themselves at risk from loss of reputation and potential total ruin in the event of a total site disruption."

First published in the UK in 1996 by Merchants, European contact centre specialists and a subsidiary of Dimension Data, this year`s edition is the sixth in a series of the industry-renowned benchmarking reports. The report has balanced global and industry representation from over 200 contact centres in 19 countries and five continents, and is an invaluable reference for all contact centre professionals. It provides managers with a set of benchmarks with which to measure their operations against, including contact centre staff salary levels, performance statistics, technology developments, CRM trends and training needs.