Preparing for COVID-19

People have been asking me about what Telnet will do should the current situation with COVID-19 worsen, so I thought I’d share the plan we’ve been following in case it might help others in similar situations.

Covid-19 virus is forcing companies to think about business continuity, whether that’s related to their supply chain or enabling employees to work remotely. For Telnet, business continuity as well as front line flexibility has been driving our business for many years and allowing us to support the changing needs of our clients.  

Our investment into our fully web-based CRM, ContactSuite, good technology partnerships, and our existing home-based workers, provides us, and our clients, some of whom also use our technology,  a scalable and highly adaptable environment.  These capabilities have already proven their worth in allowing Telnet to quickly scale; such as by adding staff from around the country at short notice – but over recent years have also allowed us to provide the capability to add a “pop-up” centre in the Philippines for a short campaign for one of our ContactSuite customers, run a team of agents in Fiji and also support staff members working around the country and in fact the world in places such as Samoa, Australia, Europe and even Alaska.

Looking at the impact of the spread of COVID-19 overseas, it’s clear that the ability for us to be able to operate flexibly is more important now than ever. It allows us to be proactive in supporting staff who might be more comfortable working from home in the earlier stages of any COVID-19 spread in New Zealand, but also provides for later stages where home based working might be the only option.  

Having the technology and capability already in place to manage remote working from just about anywhere in the world is a great head start for Telnet when faced with a pandemic situation.  More importantly, it means that instead of focussing our energies on finding and implementing systems, we can focus our energies, and the key parts of our pandemic plan,  on the most important part of our business – our staff and their families. 

John Chetwynd March 2020