Too often connectivity is taken for granted in today’s always-on, tech-dependent business environment.
Modern enterprises and their customers expect strong, clear voice and call quality, as well as seamless, real-time messaging capabilities. Anything less can have a serious impact on customer loyalty, as well as company revenues.
When a company’s voice or mobile network goes down, every second counts. Network outages put a halt to business operations, impacting internal and external communications, customer service centers or e-commerce manufacturing and delivering processes. Gartner has estimated that the cost of network downtime can run $5,600 per minute, which translates to more than $330,000 per hour for the average business.
The number one factor that will determine an enterprise’s success (or failure) with its business communications, is its network. The network’s ability to support voice and messaging services, as well as advanced features and industry-specific offerings, makes it the “unsung hero” for enterprise communications, the backbone supporting the whole organization.
In an effort to stem the financial loss from an outage - not to mention the impact on angry, frustrated customers and potential PR fallout - companies have tried to enforce network safeguards. However, despite best efforts, an industry survey analysis found that mobile operators suffer from an average of five network outages or degradations every year. Despite the precautions that are being implemented, it has historically been a very real challenge to quickly reroute voice traffic to resolve an outage and prevent further impairment.
Businesses working with a communications provider that cannot reroute around network impairments should quickly reconsider partnering with one that does.
For example, cloud-based carriers have created adaptive call routing solutions that maximize call quality, coverage and reliability. This means that when a company or service provider experiences a local access or network path outage, instead of calling the carrier and waiting for a fix, adaptive call routing will quickly bypass the disruption so that the business can quickly resume normal operations. Similarly, if companies are experiencing downgrades to their services, adaptive call routing can reroute the service over another network to ensure capacity, uptime, and quality.
Carriers that offer the capability to independently manage network impairments reduce a business's reliance on third party operators to resolve outages, which often only result in extended delays and economic damages. These software-centric carriers differ from the legacy wire and fiber telecom companies in that they offer businesses a modern approach to connectivity and flexible network diagnostic capabilities. Unlike resellers aggregating coverage across other carrier networks, these next-generation carriers use adaptive call routing to move call paths to entirely different physical networks and resume normal operations with limited interruption. Also, these software-centric carriers provide direct provisioning and porting support.
With the heavy financial risks associated with network outages, it’s becoming critical for businesses of all sizes to analyze available telecom solutions and select a carrier option that works best for their industry, company size and customer base.
For example, organizations that feature customer service centers or informational hotlines require telecom services that are operational 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Audio quality is critical in both of these situations; international calls, calls to or from rural areas of the United States, and calls from mobile phones all present unique audio quality challenges.
Evaluating service providers and proactively implementing the necessary precautions now eliminates the need to scramble reactively during the next outage. Partnering with the right carriers will not only provide your business with added confidence, but it will also give you the ability to mitigate network outages, ensure operations run uninterrupted, and customers remain connected.
