The Different Costs Associated with Network Outages…What is Your Backup Plan?

It’s happened to all of us at one time or another, you try to check out at a store and you are met with an, “I’m so sorry; our system is down. Any way you can only pay with cash.” Or another common scenario, you are calling a business regarding some incorrect charges on your account and the unfortunate reply you hear is: “We cannot view your account at the moment; our systems are not cooperating with us.” Now flip over to the business owner’s vantage point and imagine the thoughts going through their heads. Having downtime/network failures will cause at least one of the following backlashes:

  1. Loss of potential revenue
  2. Employees will have to manually phone/input every card transaction
  3. Labor Costs
  4. Repair costs

Loss of potential revenue

According to a survey done by creditcards.com, about 78% of consumers prefer to use debit/credit cards, whereas 9% prefer cash. When your network is down you can possibly lose about 78% of consumers who would prefer to use their credit cards. This doesn’t even include those that would prefer to use gift cards, store credit cards, and other methods of payments.

Employees will have to manually phone/input every credit card transaction

Phoning in every credit card transaction can result in a long wait and leave the customers with a very inconvenient feeling, to put it nicely. This can cause distrust between your business and the consumer. Unhappy customers want to voice their frustrations and they have a platform on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and let’s not forget the ever important Yelp. Some customers may just lament their disappointment but others may never return.

Labor Cost

If your employees have jobs that require the network to be fully functional at all at times, then an outage would be a management nightmare. For others, employees are being paid to wait for the network to be restored.

Repair Cost

If your business is not properly prepared for the impact of a network failure then you will have to pay to get it repaired. The cost to repair such outages could range from the hundreds to the thousands of dollars. Not being prepared to handle network failures could be costly.

Network outages are going to happen and can have a huge impact to your business which can inevitably, damage your brand. There is a simple way to mitigate this risk. First Communications is now offering 4G LTE Failover as a premise based solution that uses routing intelligence between the primary connectivity router and the cellular based failover device. This routing intelligence allows the device to detect when the primary connection is no longer working and automatically re-routes pre-defined critical business traffic to the 4G LTE connection. With these services, you can stay connected to your mission critical applications, have a reliable back up, and continue to serve your customers. First Communications offers this as a way to protect your most important assets and most importantly, your brand.

If you want to have a backup plan and end any potentially devastating business disruptions, contact First Communications at 1-800-860-1261 or fcomsales@firstcomm.com

By: Jess Bland, Senior Product Manager