Has there been a flood or a fire in your office ?
Keep in touch with your customers
As the old adage goes: “Nothing is impossible.” Even modern building owners cannot keep your offices completely safe from disasters, such as fire, water damage, etc. However, when it comes to flexible communications and business continuity, the limits are not what they used to be—all thanks to hosted IP telephony.
What every office manager dreads
When you own a business, firm, or large business, keep in mind that even minor damage to workstations can greatly affect operations, especially if fire or water has come in contact with or even destroyed traditional telephone systems. Your entire system, including lines, devices, switchboards, and equipment, could be rendered inoperable and difficult to replace quickly. Not to mention that allocating telephone lines to another temporary physical location is far from a quick and easy task.
These situations can greatly interrupt your business operations: sales and market development activities are interrupted, employee collaboration is disrupted and important messages are lost. Inevitably, it becomes more difficult to build and maintain relationships with customers.
A unexpected event. A positive outcome.
This very disruption could have happened to the team at accounting firm Demers Beaulne, which was forced to leave its offices in July 2018 following a fire at Place Montréal Trust. For three months, the firm's business activities had to be carried out elsewhere. It had the potential of becoming quite a rigmarole!
In fact, the team wanted all of its employees to be able to continue working during the hiatus. Management wanted to ensure that its customers received services as if nothing had happened. Needless to say, in this era of instant communication and heightened expectations, using the telephone system was a priority. It had to work efficiently and without any undue delay.
And that’s what happened!
Ensuring uninterrupted service
Demers Beaulne had many possibilities, because the firm used hosted IP telephony. Obviously, the day of the disaster was not like any other; furniture, files, and equipment had to be moved and set up. However, even during the two weeks required to relocate the office, which was already very fast, the telephone system never stopped working. Customer service was never interrupted.
First, messages continued to go to voicemail. IP telephony then enabled calls to be automatically redirected to employees' cell phones using the "Follow me" feature. They could also use their home telephones (VoIP hybrid system/conventional lines) for working remotely. In addition, other Softphone functions (telephony software) were activated so that employees could use their computers and the Internet to make calls. No opportunity was lost.
Hosted IP’s amazing reliability
Hosted IP telephony is reliable and flexible. The fact that the central system is located in an external data centre makes all the difference. SBK Telecom also has hosting capacity in a second centre, which ensures a reliability level of 99.99% or even 99.999%.
Having lived through the experience, Demers Beaulne’s Senior Director of IT, David Fox, is unwavering: "The hosted telephony solution is definitely more mobile and flexible.” In his opinion, regular telephony lags behind, even more so during a disaster. “The lines would have been connected directly to our offices and the supplier would have had to redirect them to another physical location. In addition, we would not have had the equipment up and running in our temporary premises."
With a dedicated Internet connection for telephony, high-performance devices, hosted IP technology and SBK Telecom’s support, your telephone system will be rock solid and reliable.
Business as usual!