We had an internet outage at our office on Tuesday which made me very thankful that, due to our business continuity plan, we always have a backup plan for such events. It reminded me how marketeers need to make sure communications are included in their firm’s business continuity plans if they are not to find themselves in a sticky situation.
A few years ago, I was the newly appointed Communications Manager at a fintech company when the internet to the main office building which housed 98% of the staff went out for two whole days. It exposed to fairly elephant-sized holes in the business continuity planning. Two of these holes were external and internal communications.
Whilst a secondary site had previously been established for the client services team to relocate to in the event of an internet outage (VOIP phones meant there was no phone lines working either), elements of the technology also stopped working leading to a lot of very upset and confused clients.
In all of the business continuity planning done just a few months earlier, no one had thought to involve my predecessor (or any of the marketing team) to cover the communications aspect.
The result was a communications, marketing and sales team unable to communicate in any manner with their clients apart from via one small tethered internet point I set up from the one place we could get signal in the office (the kitchen!)
We frantically pulled together some internal communications to share with the non-HQ staff (the field sales team and London-based staff) so they knew what was going on.
However, by this point an hour or so later the media had caught wind as to what was going on and my mobile was ringing off the hook with journalists looking for comment for their story on the fintech company whose technology went down due their office internet cutting out.
We won’t even start on the phone calls coming in from the parent company.
Several frantic days later the company had learnt its lesson the hard way and a new business continuity plan was pulled together with the marketing and communications teams involved throughout the process.
The next time the technology went down (unbelievably just a month later), polished and efficient internal and external communications were sent out keeping clients happy and the media at bay.
After such an interesting experience, one of my first questions now when starting with a new communications client is have they included communications in their business continuity plans, and can I check them for any holes!
Brandon Consulting Services Ltd 