Fire Drills

[Tracy Mitchell]

Does anyone have any experience on conducting fire or storm drills where you have to evacuate an entire center for a short period of time. I would be interested in hearing from parties whether they do or do not conduct these type of drills and what company and size of call center you might have.

Any information would be appreciated.

You can send to:

tracy.mitchell@farmersinsurance.com

Thanks

[abull]

We have the occasional fire drill with out too many problems. Since we are a multi-site call center there isn't a service break while the agents are away from their stations. One useful item for us is that each site has an emergency skill (queue) defined in such a way that when an agent is logged in to that skill (queue), every other skill (queue), at that site, will play a message instructing callers to call back later (in our case we play a technical difficulties message) and then disconnect. The normal state is for that skill (queue) to be vacant, however when an emergency arises and the call center site needs to be evacuated, a supervisor logs into the emergency skill (queue) on the way out of the building. Once the emergency is over and agents are back ready to take calls the emergency skill (gueue) is vacated again.

Art

[Jimmy Childs]

New employees are instructed on first day about evacuation procedures. They are shown where we meet and muster outside the building after any evacuation. They are instructed not to leave the building during an earthquake until after the shaking has stopped and not to take the elevator. We switch all our phones to an emergency message that plays for customers because we are a single site center. Floor supervisor takes the hard copy sign in sheet out to the muster area for roll call. There are 3 safety captains that check all of our office areas and restrooms to ensure they are clear. Our main safety PIC times the drill and evaluates completion of activity. We have had a real fire and a real earthquake. It was good to be prepared.

[Patrick Goldberg]

I have worked in several outsourced centers and found it more realistic to have a default message for no one logged in on specific skills. i.e. a call comes in to your main split/skill and noone is logged in, it automatically routes to a Technical Difficulties message. This is good for emergencies and if you have a situation where noone is logged in at a certain time of day (like the beginning or end). It prevents calls from staying in a queue without agents.