Work-From-Home Contingency Plan

With the recent concerns about the impact of Coronavirus on businesses of all shapes and sizes, we have been getting calls and emails from customers asking what they could do now to prepare.  We put together a few things that you can do to help your employees continue to be productive while working at home, and to minimize any impacts to your business or customers while they are working at home.

Get a Hosted Phone System
Hosted phone systems allow you to plug your phones into the internet and work from anywhere.  You might use it for your entire organization or just a specific group such as customer service, sales, or a contact center.  We represent a wide range of hosted phone providers and can help you find the solution that meets your needs and fits your budget.  New systems can be implemented in as soon as 2-4 weeks.

Have a Call Center?
If you have an existing call center, your agents are often working in close proximity to each other and therefore potentially more at risk of community spread.  We recommend setting up a least a few work-from-home seats set up in a queue and then be able to point traffic to the queue for any agents that you will have working at home.  We have a number of providers that can handle this type of situation with out needing to replace your existing call center solution.  The cost per agent is typically under $50/month/agent and will allow you a viable solution should you need it.   

Already have a Hosted Phone System from CityHosted?
1.  Download Mobile App
Each employee that may be working at home can download the the Mobile app to use on their mobile devices or computer.  This will allow them to continue to make and receive calls as if they were in the office and also to be part of hunt groups and queues. 

2.  Bring Phones Home
Employees can take their hosted phones with them and plug them into their home broadband connection.  They will need to power the phones by plugging them into a PoE (Power Over Ethernet) adapter or an AC power adapter.  If you need to purchase additional power adapters, please contact your sales rep.  Most brands are approximately $25 per adapter.

3.  Order Additional Phones
Some employees may want to have a phone at the office and one at the house rather than bring their exisitng phone back and forth.  Their phone number can then be setup to ring both phones so that regardless of where they are, they are still connected.

Hopefully you won’t be impacted, but we want to be prepared in case you are.  Please let us know if there is anything else you need help with including internet access, wireless access, networking offices together, and more. 

Download Contingency Plan