Three Things You Can Expect Following a Network Outage

When you think of a network outage, the first issue that comes to mind is most likely financial loss. It’s well known that business downtime can cost a tremendous amount of money — and most businesses, especially smaller organizations, lack the resources to sustain a prolonged outage.

Here are some other things that can go wrong after an unplanned network outage:

Angry clients: If you are relying on a main server to store client-related information, and something happens that prevents you from accessing it, your team will be unable to provide clients with critical account-related information. And to a customer, there is nothing worse than being told that you cannot provide access to their account. This is an easy way to infuriate a client.

Lost productivity: Information that cannot be entered into spreadsheets and databases may have to be manually inserted after network access is restored. This can take extra time, and prevent team members from focusing on other important tasks. Instead of focusing on current problems, team members may have to backtrack. It’s also possible that employees will move too quickly in an effort to catch up, which can lead to data entry errors and a whole host of additional issues.

A tarnished reputation: Reputation is critical in business, and if you cannot provide essential services like reporting, billing and communications to customers they will judge you for it and seek out the services of your competitors. Remember that it can take years to build a client’s trust, but just a few minutes of downtime to destroy it.