"Okay, please to calm down Mr. Smith. Did you close all your windows and go to your power station and turn off the big switch as I told you? Very good. Now go back to the power station and turn the switch back on again..."
This is a joke...right?
I manage a world-wide IT call center which is primarily based in Houston. Prior to the hurricane the management of the company asked for a solution that allowed us to offer our Gulf Coast employees the ability to call in and report their status or get information about the status of the company. We decided to use our normal 800 number that our employees call in for IT support.
We worked pretty much right up until the storm setting up the system but we had it running and it was heavily used by our employees after the storm. For staffing we ended up using fellow employees located in Arkansas, Oklahoma, California, Canada, Norway and Singapore. I even had to use the number to report I had lost power.
We did try to get someone outside to monitor the system but we were not able to find any companies willing to take over in such short notice and for such a short time. That is when I asked for volunteers and was very pleased when my fellow coworked jumped at the chance to help.
So you know outsourcing has been discussed and investigated but we still feel it is a better business model for us to keep our call center in-house.