Tough Times Are Going To Impact Your Business

As I walk through London Heathrow early in the morning, there is an eerie sense of quiet that I am just not used too. I have done this trip three times in the last four weeks and this is the first time that I realized the Coronavirus has a real global impact. The few people walking the terminal halls with me are distantly apart… some wearing masks and others just not collaborating in the usual airport banter. COVID-19 is real; and it is impacting business.

I enter my flight, United Boeing 767-300 and pull out my personal air purifier (ok, I pulled two of them out), and my bag of generic bleach wipes to clean off all my seating area. I always use to make fun of Patty, my wife, for doing this but here I am making sure that my bed for the next 8 hours is completely wiped down (yes, I got upgraded).

In retrospect, earlier in the day a customer pulled me aside and said, we have a large group of people in Italy and they just won’t come into work in complete fear of what is occurring in Milan and around the world. “It is crippling us.” In a very confident voice I said, “Five9 can help you here”. We have experienced other business emergencies where we have been able to stand up hundreds of agents in 24 – 72 hours and have them work right from home.

The customer was in complete amazement.

They are in the middle of a global business transition and transformation project and their current vendor couldn’t do it even if they had a month or two (takes that long just to burn in equipment and build the network).

Huge advantage to our company and all true cloud providers.

In years past, our clients have experienced events such as vehicle recalls, other cloud vendors that couldn’t scale, natural disasters, and business locations that have been destroyed. This is the first time experiencing a potential “pandemic.”

We have all seen the affects: the stock market tumbling, airplanes and airports being empty, large trade shows being cancelled, and the loss of life.

What is your plan? Put people first of course!

But seriously… What does your business continuity plan look like?

One of my team members in Atlanta was just alerted that her daughter’s private school has a student that has been compromised and diagnosed with COVID-19 symptoms. Their business continuity plan was shut down for 30 days! Yikes!

You can’t afford to shut your business down and you don’t have a cloud first strategy then it is time to quickly develop, adopt, and transform your business now!

Today alone, two frantic new prospects needed 1000 seat disaster centers immediately.

Another two clients asked us for our Five9 business continuity plan. The great news is we are one of the world’s best cloud contact center companies and we have a distributed architecture and team member base that spans the globe in physical offices but mostly remote in the field. Our business will continue and flourish; helping companies move to the cloud immediately or just expand their current footprint with us.

So, I ask again… what is your plan?

We at Five9 wish your family and friends all the best during these difficult times. Remember, put people first. Think hard about the travel you are about to take… I know I am.

Let us know if we can help you during these tough times. I know I will be using my Zoom video conferencing every day!