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At-Home as Disaster Recovery Strategyor what to do when someone else controls your destiny

Jerry Brennan, VP OperationsdPI

About dPI

• dPi Teleconnect provides residential home phone, long distance and dial up internet service in 43 states

• dPi Mobile provides wireless service in 3 states

• dPi Energy provides electric service in Texas

dPI Call Centers

• Moved from a mismatched piecemeal Call Distribution/IVR platform to inContact 11/08– Dallas, Texas 15 corporate and 35 call center

• In 2 ½ years expanded corporate to 55 and call center to 205 by adding only bandwidth

• I can deliver a call any place in the world just by changing a phone number in inContact

dPI Call Centers

• Complicated multi functional bi-lingual centers:– For Teleconnect, Mobile and Energy

• Sales and Sales Support• Service Activation• Customer Service• Collections

• Geographically disparate operations:– Carrollton, Texas: 70 corporate / 40 call center– Guatemala / El Salvador: 30 call center– Bangalore, India: 120 call center– West Monroe, Louisiana: 15 call center

Need for At-Home, Part 1• Given notice in August 2009 that we had to

move to a new location (old building was being razed)

• Moved over a long weekend• Friday & Saturday sent everyone to work at

home• No disruption in services

Need for At-Home, Part 2• Building dPI was leasing was foreclosed on and

lease was terminated by new owner• 2 weeks to move or be evicted• New building required 100% build-out• 100 people worked from home for 45 days

– Used existing and bought additional laptops, desktops, cell phones, air-cards

– We even used employees’ home computers and phones

Need for At-Home, Part 3

• Natural disruptions, such as ice storms• During the February storm, 3 people in the

building, the rest worked from home• The company was already configured for

work-at-home

Planning for At-Home• Provide detailed at-home process

documentation(include TCP/IP addresses, phone numbers, problem escalation process)

• Make sure that folks keep their cell phones plugged in• Train employees in the office as to how process will

work at home • Establish “calling tree” phone list • Weekly conference calls with teams• Recognize that a good employee at the office will be a

good employee at home

Monitoring Employees• Acknowledge that you can’t control some things

during emergency contingency, i.e. noise pollution, office setup, …

• Establish process / restrictions for routine at-home

• Utilize monitoring and QA tools• Match timecards to inContact reports• Mystery calls• You get what you inspect, not what you expect!