Tropical Storm Philippe to hit South Florida Sunday

ContactRelief recommends continued contact with consumers in South Florida.

Saturday, 28 October 2017 21:30:00 -05:00



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Contact Recommendations for Contact Centers

ContactRelief is making public recommendations made to its subscribers, Saturday, October 28th.

ContactRelief recommends continued contact with consumers in South Florida in the path of Tropical Storm Philippe.

Tropical Storm Philippe

As we have noted previously in "Can We Please Be Done With Hurricane Season?", hurricane season is not over. Tonight, parts south Florida will be reminded of this as Tropical Storm Philippe crosses western Cuba and tracks towards the southern tip of Florida. ContactRelief has monitored the tropical disturbance that is now Tropical Storm Philippe for the last few days. Forecasters from the National Hurricane Center correctly flagged the disturbance as ripe for strengthening and this was born out as the storm was upgraded to a Tropical Depression at 11 AM EDT today and to a Tropical Storm at 5 PM EDT the same day.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecast indicates that the storm may strengthen. Fortunately for South Florida, the storm is already close, having traversed Cuba a few hours ago. That and the underlying storm conditions and interactions with frontal boundaries, mean that the storm is not expected to reach hurricane strength before it dissipates in 72 hours over the Atlantic.

Tropical cyclones spin counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere (and in the opposite direction in the Southern Hemisphere) due to the Coriolis Effect (which due to the earth's rotation deflects the wind direction to the right side of the actual movement of the wind in the Northern Hemisphere and left side in the Southern Hemisphere). Philippe's heaviest winds are in the storm's leading right edge. If the storm track as shown in the figure above remains accurate, the heaviest sustained winds from Tropical Storm Philippe will, as shown below, remain offshore sparing the hard-hit Florida Keys and other parts of southern Florida from significant wind damage. While tropical storm force winds could occur in brief squalls or gusts, the National Hurricane Center says that "The primary threat from this system will be heavy rainfall that can cause localized flooding across portions of Cuba, the Florida Keys, and South Florida."

For this reason, ContactRelief is recommending continued contact with consumers in South Florida.

A map of the United States displays the forecasted wind speeds of Tropical Storm Philippe.
Figure 1: Tropical Storm Philippe Wind Speed Probabilties (Courtesy: National Hurricane Center).

Why You Must Also Prepare for Man-Made Disasters - The Las Vegas Mass Shooting

Contact centers need to be prepared to act quickly and decisively not only for forecasted events like hurricanes, but also for man-made disasters that cannot be predicted. On Sunday night in Las Vegas, over 50 people were killed and over 500 injured in a senseless mass shooting at a local music festival.

ContactRelief issued a recommendation to suspend contact to accounts with zip codes surrounding the Las Vegas Strip on October 2nd at 12:30 AM PDT, a little more than 2 hours after the incident began, and expanded this contact suspension recommendation at 4:30 AM PDT to include all of the county surrounding Las Vegas (Clark County, Nevada) as more details became known.

If you are like most companies, you can't afford the staff to perform the around the clock monitoring required to act promptly, the management of multiple concurrent disasters, and information gathering it takes to know when and where to suspend and resume contact for all types of possible events. But why bother when ContactRelief has this and more for less than $300 per month.

Why You Must Act Now

Our offer of free access to our service will expire soon. We provide the only service specially designed for contact centers and focused on all aspects of the customer experience during natural and man-made disasters. We can not only tell you when and where to suspend contact, but when and why you should resume contact, and how you can improve your brand image by the actions you take during these periods. Because before starting ContactRelief we owned and operated large contact centers, we understand your business perspective, and our recommendations are designed to help you deliver a great customer experience while still enabling you to achieve your other objectives.

Don't Delay

The next disaster is on its way. Become a ContactRelief subscriber and keep your company protected from disaster. Our full recommendations consist of the areas to be suspended and the list of zip codes covering these areas. For as little as $300 per month your company can quickly implement a solution that protects your company and its customers. As we say at ContactRelief, "It's just smart business."

Contact sales@contactrelief.com for more information.

What can ContactRelief do for you?

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