3 Things Your Business Continuity Plan Needs

If you're slammed with unexpected demand for your products and services, for example, a business continuity plan can help you capitalize on the opportunity without experiencing an interruption in your day-to-day operations. When a cybercriminal or insider threat impacts your business, you must spring into action, reassuring your customers and business partners that you're on top of the situation and protecting their interests.

In short, a business continuity plan is the hallmark of a mature organization that understands risk management is essential for not just surviving but thriving well into the future. Recent advances in cloud communications technology can position your business especially well to achieve resilience with far less cost and effort than was required in the past. With that in mind, here are three things you should do now to ensure business continuity.

1. Enable Business Continuity From Any Location

It's easy to think of your business as something that takes place in your office, but the truth is that your business is actually your people — and thanks to cloud communications technology, your people can make your business happen from anywhere.

When a disaster or urgent event occurs, your customers need accurate, up-to-the-minute information on how your organization is responding and what they can expect. To make that possible, your employees need to have full access to the communications technology they use in their day-to-day work, including voice calling, text messaging, and video chat. And now, those communications no longer have to take place within the confines of a traditional physical office with a data center.

A best-in-class cloud communications solution, designed with business continuity in mind, gives your employees full access to all the communications capabilities they need, whether they're working remotely or on the move using a mobile device. If a power outage hits your headquarters or a weather emergency prevents your staff from safely traveling to the office, for example, your communications will keep running in the cloud and remain accessible to them.

All your employees will need to use these communication tools are a computer or mobile device and an app or a simple web login. And since the tools are exactly the same as the ones they would use back in the traditional office, your employees can enjoy their usual level of productivity from any location. Remote administration makes it easy to update main office greetings or set up special call routing rules, ensuring callers are able to reach the right resources in short order. Your business communications can continue uninterrupted, running just as they would on a typical day.

2. Partner With Trusted Experts for Strategic Advantage

In a crisis, speed is essential to your survival. You need to be able to respond on the double, keeping a laser focus on your core business operations and your customers' needs. This is exactly the kind of situation in which it's advantageous to have a strong partnership with a trusted cloud communications provider with proven expertise in business continuity. It can keep your business connected more efficiently and cost-effectively than you could on your own, freeing your team to zero in on the critical next steps outlined in your business continuity plan.

A trusted expert can provide you with the network reliability and cloud resiliency that give you peace of mind during an emergency, knowing that you can maintain business continuity and enjoy the high quality of service you've come to expect in your business communications. With top-notch customer service on call 24/7, you can be confident that any issues that arise will be promptly resolved. This helps you put your best foot forward with your customers even while you're responding to an urgent event behind the scenes, giving you one less problem to deal with when time and resources are limited.

3. Embrace an Omnichannel Approach

To fully engage with your customers during an urgent situation, you must reach them on all the channels where they spend their time. In years gone by, these channels were limited to voice and email. Now, your customers expect to be able to communicate with you via text, social, and messaging apps. Your ability to quickly get the word out to them and seek their timely feedback depends on an omnichannel approach.

Omnichannel communications keep your business resilient in several different business continuity scenarios. If you're faced with unexpected high demand for your products or services, for example, you'll want to be in close contact with all of your customers — long standing ones and new ones alike — to tell them what they can expect. In this way, you can keep delivering a consistently high-quality customer experience even as you scale to meet the demand, ensuring continued customer loyalty and an enviable brand reputation.

Perhaps most importantly, your team can accomplish all of this from anywhere thanks to cloud innovations like the omnichannel contact center. With full Salesforce integration, your business can still deliver a top-notch customer experience, just as it would from a traditional physical office, even if the team is working remotely — and with such seamless communications, your customers might even be none the wiser.

Ensure Business Continuity Now for Future Success

Whatever challenges or disruptions may come your way, you can manage the risk they present with a carefully crafted business continuity plan. By taking advantage of cloud innovations to keep your business running smoothly from anywhere, partnering with trusted experts, and embracing omnichannel communications to remain resilient, your business can advance into the future with clarity and confidence.