The best plan for your business in dealing with disasters is to be prepared before the disaster occurs. Disasters, natural and man-made, are sometimes unavoidable. AnswerFirst is uniquely positioned to help you respond, survive and recover when the unexpected happens. Unlike many businesses, our lights will be on during an emergency. We have full battery backup systems plus a diesel generator for long outages. We also have redundant T-1 and PRI telephone circuits to our center which are not reliant on a single vendor.

Avoid Downtime By Planning Today

As mentioned, the key to working through disasters successfully is to plan your response for them before they occur. Arrange to seamlessly redirect your calls to AnswerFirst.  Let our agents act as your emergency communications go-between.  Create a disaster readiness strategy with us that works well for your business.  You may choose to have only our center as your disaster center or we can arrange for a redundant solution where another of our centers would be a “backup” for our primary center.

Here are a few of the services we can provide to you:

* Employee Contact Center - Consider the business impact if your primary communications are inoperable and the affect it will have on your emergency operations. Vital personnel must first be made aware of an emergency before any emergency contingency plan can be put in effect.Communications are needed to report emergencies, to warn personnel of danger, to keep families and off-duty employees informed about what's happening at the facility and to direct response actions. How can you keep the lines of communications open in the event of disaster? How will you get in touch with your employees or they get in touch with you? These are all questions businesses should ask themselves before a disaster impacts your business. Since disasters come in all shapes and sizes, it is important to plan for all possible contingencies whether the outage is short term or temporary in nature or a total communications failure. The best place to start is to analyze the everyday functions performed by your facility and the communications, both voice and data, used to support them.

* Tier One Customer/Vendor Contact Center - How will your customers react if no one answers your phones? How will you keep in contact with customers and suppliers? How will they know when your services will be available again? Don't make the mistake of letting them guess what has happened, our call center can act as the temporary go between to keep you customers and vendors informed. Silence is definitely not golden in a situation like this, if you do not keep your customers informed, they are likely to start looking elsewhere for your type services.

* Tier Two Customer/Vendor Contact Center - We can assist in keeping some of your primary business functions operational. We can re-direct shipments from vendors, process orders and serve your company in a variety of ways in your time of need. Talk to one of our sales associates for details about some of the custom solutions we can offer in this area.

There are many communication options available and the crucial factor is redundancy, do not rely on a single type of backup communication for all of your business functions. Should that single backup communication type fail in the disaster, you’ll have nothing to fall back on. Here are a few of the communication options we offer which one can consider when establishing reliable backup communications:

* Toll-Free Phone Number - all of our Disaster Readiness accounts will have a unique and dedicated toll-free number included at no additional charge. Our toll-free numbers can be called from anywhere in the continental U.S. without charge to the caller. This can be important when ATMs and banks are not functioning in your area. We can also activate these toll-free numbers for free calls from Canada and other select areas although additional international charges will apply to your account.

* Local Phone Number - every account will also be assigned unique and dedicated local Tampa, Florida phone number (813, 727, 863, etc.). While callers dialing these numbers from outside the Tampa area will incur long distance fees, they can still be a critical resource in the event toll-free numbers cannot be accessed in your area.

* Point to Point Private Line - while not every business will have a need because of cost, this will sometimes be the most reliable type of phone communication. You should talk to your communications vendors about their emergency response capabilities in order to establish your procedures for restoring services and to consider if this type service is a good fit for your business.

* Fax - while voice services may not be functioning, fax service sometimes will. We offer both inbound and outbound faxing at no additional cost. Our inbound fax lines offer both toll-free and local phone numbers.

* Text Messaging - this is an often overlooked, but extremely reliable service. In times you cannot receive phone calls on your cellular or PDA type device, text messaging can still be operable because of it's simplicity. We can provide outbound text messaging from our systems at no additional charge and can also provide inbound text messaging for an extra charge.

* E-Mail - we provide a 24 hour e-mail address to support our clients. We have operators standing by at all times to respond to requests from our clients. If the phone lines are inoperable, there is still a chance your e-mail will work. Of course we can also deliver data or messages via e-mail and these services are available at no charge.

* Web Communication - just because your e-mail isn't functioning, it doesn't mean you cannot get out to the Internet. We can offer both inbound and outbound web communications for your business. With our Client Web Access application, we can allow you to come to our web site to log in and view all types of information for your account. You can view your messages, listen to calls, view your account screens and access and import data we collect on web forms for you.

* Chat - this service can again be valuable because of it's simplicity. While not a standard offering with our Disaster Readiness plans, talk to one of our sales associates if you would like to add these feature to your account.

* Local Area Networks - with the use of a point to point T-1, we can give you valuable access to our systems. Talk to your vendors about this service and if it has a function in your Disaster Readiness contingencies.

* Voice Mail - sometimes something as simple as a voice mail box can meet most of your needs. We offer our soice mail solutions with both local and toll-free access.

Our call center's unique ability to convert one type of communication into another type of communication can be key in an emergency, but perhaps most important, there are live human beings standing by 24 hours a day able to react to your needs in a sometimes fluid environment. To learn more about how our call center can help with live operator, IVR, text messaging and web interface message retrieval in the event of an emergency, give one of our sales associates a call today. And remember, do not forget to TEST your contingency plans. The best laid plans are worthless if they do not function as needed when a real emergency arises.

Rely On Our Systems

Each of our Disaster Backup prepared centers utilize battery-powered uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems to withstand short power outages, protect computers against damaging voltage spikes and enable orderly computer power down to save data. Backup generators are on site to keep the power flowing through extended outages. And if all else fails, our redundant voice/data connections can automatically switchover calls and contacts to an entirely different center. How well your business survives a disaster is determined by how well you prepare NOW. Let us show you how we can keep your organization going in the event of a disaster.

Do you have questions about our answering service? Please call 1-800-645-2616 or contact us for assistance.