Toll Free Numbers: Top Business Tool for Hurricane Preparedness

Hurricane Isaac has many business owners scrambling to protect their homes and offices but even more important than that, they need to protect their incomes and the livelihood of their businesses.
Homes and commercial properties can be rebuilt and office equipment replaced but most businesses aren’t prepared to go weeks or months without any incoming cash flow. How long can your organization survive?
Often it isn’t the direct impact of the hurricane, which is most damaging, but it’s the ensuing period of chaos without power and downed operations. This can permanently cripple an organization. This is the time to get prepared and get the edge, grab market share, and come out on top.
If you can stay up and running when your competitors aren’t, their customer base is up for grabs…
Here are four tips on how to turn a hurricane into a windfall of profits:
1. Cloud Computing
Having cloud solutions for file sharing and collaboration is essential not only for protecting data from loss but for access and the ability to continue to keep running when your office is out of commission.
2. Staying Connected
Having an evacuation plan is essential as having plans for backups for Internet connection and phones. Even just being down for a couple of days can mean an exodus of customers and losing deals in the pipeline. Know where you will go and how you will stay online.
3. Call Forwarding
Without a doubt a business’ single most important tool for staying operational is the phone. This makes toll free numbers the best weapon in a well-planned arsenal for protecting against severe weather threats and other disasters. They can easily be forwarded to new ring-to numbers and routed to entrepreneurs’ mobile phones, disbursed between call centers, or set up to call other pre-screened remote staffing solutions in an emergency.
4. Staffing
Your staff may not be able to evacuate to stay connected so it is also wise to have outsourced freelance contractors on call for these occasions so that your business doesn’t have to miss a beat no matter what is thrown at it.