Brown & Brown, Inc. (Naples, FL)
Redundant Systems and a Well-Executed Backup Plan Keep Florida Agency in Business in Aftermath of Hurricane Wilma
The Challenge
Maggie Miller of Brown & Brown, Inc. is the Operations Manager of the Naples office. With her husband and three children, she left Naples in advance of Hurricane Wilma on Friday, October 21, 2005, when the staff closed the insurance office and kicked in their Catastophe plan. All systems were shut down and phones were forwarded prior to the storm.
Brown & Brown (B&B) had dodged bullets before. In fact their new office building was built to the highest available hurricane codes, and they felt comfortable that they might get lucky again.
But Hurricane Wilma, now categorized as the fifth costliest in U.S. history, wasn’t to be denied. The B&B office finally took a direct hit.
Power went out, phone lines were down, and the people at the agency were scattered. Fortunately, the B&B Naples office was equipped with the critical disaster recovery team at Artizan Internet Services.
The Solution
Artizan Takes Control Prior to the Storm
Before leaving their office Friday, B&B forwarded their phones to Artizan’s Call Centers. With the service up and running, B&B knew that clients calling in would not experience an interruption in service. After the storm, power was on and off for two days and the phones remained forwarded to Artizan. All in all, it took a full 10 days to get everyone together and bring the agency back to full operations. Complicating the situation, a number of staff members had major damage to their homes, but the office Profit Center Manager and Leader, Tom Ellis, had the foresight to provide a hotel room for staff to collect themselves, take showers, and get some rest.
The aftermath of the hurricane and the restoration of critical services were inconsistent and spotty. Even after power to the building was fully restored, there was damage in the surrounding areas and both area power and phone service remained unstable. As a result, the agency chose to keep the phone service covered by Artizan’s Call Centers under the CSR24 program until they knew that power and phones were up once and for all. “I can’t tell you how critical it was to have Artizan’s team on standby to keep our business up and running,” Maggie Miller said. “They were more than worth every penny we invested in their service.”
During the time that the agency was down, almost 800 phone calls were logged into the Artizan Call Center. Each client call was logged, most insureds were directed to the carriers to file their claim, and a permanent electronic record of each contact was e-mailed immediately to the agency. Critical issues were immediately elevated to agency staff via email and cell phone to be dealt with directly. Through this backup, B&B once again provided superior service to their clients and the Naples team had time to tend to their own battered homes and personal property.
“You always learn from a storm, but overall our disaster recovery plan worked well,” Maggie Miller of B&B stated. “But one thing we learned is how important it is to make sure more than one person in the office understands all the components of the plan and where all the key information resides,” Miller continued.
“More and more redundancy is the key to disaster preparation today,” Miller concluded.
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