Once-in-a-millenium events have struck us once too often in the past eight months. First the tsunami in the southern states, then the floods in Maharashtra and Gujarat, and especially Mumbai.
Pouring rain, flooding waters and a power blackout brought Mumbai to its knees on July 26.
Purely from a business point of view, the Bombay Stock Exchange – a barometer of more than just business sentiments – showed the best way to cope with both the tragedies. Get on with it. On July 27, dealers in the Exchange (mostly stuck overnight) were reported to be keen on trading in spite of the government declaring a public holiday!
In the weeks before the rains hit the country’s shores, you might just have started stocking up for “replacement” sales, expecting customers walking in with problems put down to “contact with moisture”. The deluge on July 26 would have changed that for solution providers, dealers, and their customers in Mumbai, and the ones who suffered most are surely the smaller businesses – there were bigger concerns to be tackled.
It’s a good time to remind some of those customers and yourselves about the need to have disaster recovery plans like the ones bigger corporates have. Alternate sources of power to ensure at least the most critical servers and systems are running, regular data backups and storage in less riskier locations (replication), … and insurance for your own most basic infrastructure.
But one matter that’s even more important and far less thought about is your employee in accounts or commercials or customer service, who’s become untraceable. How many of your employees can double up for an absent resource? Have you trained all your staff in the basics across the setup? Do you have a “single window” system where customers can get information they need from whoever they contact in your organization, even more critical if you are a service provider? Do you have a contingency plan for your employees, which then transfers to your customers?
The one most lesson to be learnt from such terrible days – your customers will be most satisfied when you are with them when they need you most. Prepare yourself for that.