The 3 Most Damaging Forms Of Commercial Downtime
Business downtime is only acceptable when it’s infrequent and scheduled. Of course, you may suspend your operations during national holidays and customers will accept a delay in deliveries or customer response times during those periods. Maybe you run a service, and schedule downtime periods for maintenance, so security can remain at the forefront of everything you do.
Unplanned downtime, however, can be disastrous. Even if your service or website goes down for thirty minutes, you can bet forum posts, online detectors, and frustrated clients will make their presence heard. But it’s also true to say that downtime isn’t just one issue, as if the entirety of your business goes down and you can’t function until it’s back up. Rarely is downtime a binary system like that.
For this reason, it’s worth checking into the main types of business downtime, including how to protect against them. Without further ado, please consider the following advice:
Operational Downtime
Operational downtime suggests a disfunction with the main pillars of your business.This kind of downtime is when your physical operations can't function properly, which could be defined as a machine breaking down, a power outage in your building, or a problem with your supply chain. It's when the gears of your business just stop turning.
That’s why multiple levels of contingency planning is so important. If a supplier doesn’t have the material you need, using a backup, or switching out for a substitute may be necessary. Infrastructure upgrades such as having a backup power source or a way to quickly get a piece of equipment fixed with an emergency response time is also essential. Moreover, having solid insurance in place so you can claim against lost funds may be necessary.
Web & Online Services Downtime
It’s long been the case that a business’s website is often its most important storefront, which means that when it goes down, it can feel like a disaster. This is why businesses now have “status” pages in which you can see the uptime of all its vital services, as well as a timeline informing visitors of the technical fault and the timeline for a fix.
Such downtime includes anything from a server crash to a problem with your hosting provider. A website that is down can frustrate customers and give them a very negative impression of your business, so it’s essential to monitor your website's performance and have a team or service that can get it back up and running quickly. Always look to see who the most reliable service host is year on year, and never feel hesitant to change if required.
Payment Processing Downtime
Nothing is more frustrating for a customer than getting all the way to the checkout and finding that they can't pay for their items. Payment processing downtime is when your system for accepting payments fails, which means you are directly losing sales, and can easily lose trust. After all, a customer may never try again if you frustrated them with poor payment implementation. This can be caused by a problem with your merchant services provider or an issue with your internal point of sale system. Make certain to use a POS system with great testimonials, wide compatibility, and alternatives if the main implementation has a temporary glitch.
With this advice, we hope you can prevent the three most damaging forms of downtime.
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