It's that time of year again where hurricane season starts the 24 hour news cycle that we all love to watch...not really! Last year, Houston and Florida got rocked with massive damage and floods and islands like Puerto Rico still haven't really recovered...
bvoip is monitoring the storm trajectory as our East Coast data center with Rackspace is based in Northern Virginia and making sure we have all our ducks in a row. The governor of Virginia has already issued a state of emergency in order to prepare just in case.
For bvoip partners on the east coast that may be in the storm's path like North and South Carolina, Virginia, D.C. and Georgia, please review our check list below:
Plan for Remote Workers Devices
If you have to have people working remotely, especially for a prolonged period of time, make sure that you think about sending IP phones home with employees and make sure to pre-load and test mobile phone apps for iOS & Android.
Pre-Record Phone System Greetings
Make sure to pre-record inclement weather greetings for the phone system especially if your normal call flow will change like options for different people or departments differing from normal. If you are planning to "close" make sure to set holidays in the phone system ahead of time! If you have your customer's self service make sure to send them a how-to doc to do this.
Set Carrier Side DR Routing
If your dial tone carriers allow you to setup fail over routing for your inbound phone numbers think ahead and set that up just in case to make sure you don't have to scramble in the last second if there is an issue.
Keep Extra Phones Handy or Order Some Quickly
Just in case major areas are flooded and you or your clients are displaced make sure to get some inventory of spare or extra phones so you can easily "setup shop" temporarily elsehwere
4G Data Backup
It is expected that trees and power poles may go down and as you know power companies do their best to repair these but it can take time. Make sure to have some 4G data options available to you and your customer's as if they don't already have these in place.
bvoip support ready to help!
bvoip support will be on hand during this week's storm and please don't hesitate to contact us if you have questions!