A key to building a business in any industry is being able to create a good relationship with your customers. As the people who are interacting with your customers on a daily basis, your customer support team are your relationship builders, and their role on a day to day basis could be the difference between winning or losing business.

There are no set rules to developing a great customer support experience, but it’s the little things that count. Being attentive to each and every person you speak to and showing a positive, helpful and friendly environment will guarantee that customers leave with a great impression and shows that you care about everyone using your business, no matter how big or small their contracts. Providing that positive experience will more often than not see customers investing further in your organization, or recommending you to their person network which is invaluable.

Great customer service is putting yourself in your customer's shoes. It’s critical to ensure the person you are speaking with understands that you care about them and you are concerned about what they are going through, rather than just looking to palm them off onto another team member. The best customer interactions occur when a customer feels that they are being listened to and understood, no matter the size of the problem.

Nancy Friedman of Telephone Doctor outlines the three most important things that a customer representative should do and should avoid. In her video entitled “Excellent Customer Service Skills” Nancy talks about the impact of empathy and enthusiasm, as well as the negative effects of Apathy in your business.

We will now take a close look at Nancy’s Top 3 Tips.

Demonstrating to a customer that you understand and being aware of, and sensitive to, their feelings and thoughts are critical. We are all human and react to human emotions, so when we are treated in a way that doesn’t cater to those emotion, we immediately disconnect mentally. How many times have you sat through endless recordings while trying to gain customer support from a large corporation only to grow to hate the company more with every minute that passes?

Empathy is an essential service mentality and it’s a key building block in creating a great customer support experience. During phone conversations it is easier for well-oriented customer service representative to show empathy because they have the benefit of using perfect tone of voice to make understanding easier, but we live in a world where most of our communication comes in the form of email and live chat messages, so we need to adapt.

Some tips on how to show empathy include:

Listen – Active listening is the most effective way to show empathy to customers. When talking to customers, focus is very important. You have to listen with purpose and let the customer feel that you are the most reliable person to talk to.

Focus – When customer starts logging their issues, focus is very important. Don’t be afraid to paraphrase if you feel like you don’t fully understand the situation. Focus on the main issue but keep listening to every point that the customer is trying to say.

Sympathize – Even the customer is telling the whole story of his/her life, whether it’s related to the service that your company provides, it is important that you sympathize, sometimes clients make dramatic introduction before telling the main issue. When you sympathize to customers, they begin to become comfortable and you conversation will go smoothly and will end up nicely.

Offer Help – Once you heard the entire story and learned what the issue is all about, it’s time for you to offer help. Let the client feel that you are ready to help them resolve their issues the best way you can.

The last thing anyone wants when talking to customer support is hearing the person they are talking to sounds like they don’t want to be there. Being able to bring an observable high level of energy or interest to a project situation makes a huge difference to the customer. People who are truthfully enthusiastic don't discriminate between their activities, instead they tend to bring high energetic and passive of emotions to whatever activity they’re doing.

Acknowledge - The initial opportunity to put your enthusiasm on display is to acknowledge your customer. Enthusiasm makes it easy for you to reach out to your customer and it can be shown by the tone of your voice and by the positive words you say to your customer.

Provide – Whether you have the information or not, always provide assistance. Avoid saying negative words such as “I’m sorry, we don’t have that” or I’m sorry, I am not trained to assist you in that matter”. Great customer service is always finding a way to help and not telling what you can’t do.

Appreciate – Most customers like being appreciated. Thank you is the most used and common word and it is very powerful to show to customer that they’ve been appreciated. Appreciating customer is like telling them they are very important.

Apathy is indifference and lack of emotion and caring. A customer agent should not show traces of apathy as this would affect to the quality of service they are offering to their clients. Apathetic attitudes and bad attitudes are just similar when it comes to customer service; they both cause negativity in the workplace and to customer relationship. Avoiding apathy is leading you to be more professional customer service provider.

Define the cause – Defining the cause of an issue is one effective way to avoid apathy. Once you become aware of the cause, you will eventually become interested on finding a solution. Apathy sometimes a result of cluelessness and it becomes worst if you keep on believing that you don’t have any idea rather than finding a way to discover it.

Be perspective – Always learn how to weigh things and situation. A great customer representative should always compare, analyze and judge fairly based on the situation.

Be self-motivated – If you feel good about your job and you love what you are doing, you strive to achieve more and do better. Company culture is one of the most important things to motivate employees and that includes staff in customer service. A great company motivates its people that start from the heads to the staff and it will be contagious.

By following these basic tips, you will be on the path to providing exceptional customer success and taking your business to the next level!

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Members of the Go1 Team are passionate about helping the community, and one of the ways we do this is by participating in events to help raise money for organisations doing amazing things! We are excited to announce that this year we will have two team members participating in this years Helping Hoops 24 hour Charity Shootout!

Scott Cooper and Rachel Farac of the Go1 San Francisco office will both be shooting as many free throws as they can in 15 minutes to raise money for Helping Hoops. The shootout takes place on June 25th and 26th and is based in Melbourne, Australia with participants from all over the world taking part in the event on their local basketball court as Scott and Rachel will be doing.

Helping Hoops is a Melbourne charity running free weekly basketball programs for over 1,000 disadvantaged and disabled children every year. The programs aren't just basketball related, they also focus on building self-esteem, aiding social cohesion, discipline and leadership skills. Helping Hoops provides a place of safety and stability where these kids can prove to themselves and the world that they are not limited by what society expects of them. They are not expected to develop the next LeBron James or Kevin Durant, but we do hope to develop these kids into best people they can be.

The Go1 team will be raising money that will go towards supporting Helping Hoops in running their programs across Melbourne for the twelve months.

Please donate to our team members by clicking the image below and help us support a great charity!

To find out more information about the Helping Hoops Charity Shootout, or to participate yourself, please visit http://helpinghoops.com.au/24

The Go1 team take part in Helping Hoops Charity Shootout

If you could learn anything that you wanted within 20 hours, what would you learn? It might not sound like a long time, but a book titled 'The First 20 Hours' and accompanying TED talk from Josh Kaufman has shown that you through using rapid skill acquisition techniques you can go from knowing absolutely nothing, to performing at a high level of skill within a very short period of time.

Josh's book topped the Amazon best sellers lists, and while you think that this might seem too good to be true, it's not. Kaufman hasn't invented a new way of learning that will change the way consume educational material forever, but he has developed a great process that you can follow and will ensure that you absorb as much information as possible on a subject within a shortened timeframe.

Once we are in our mid twenties and our brains are fully developed, we are able to learn new material a more rapid rate and adapt to new processes, but it's not quite that simple. We live in a world of distractions. It doesn't matter which directions you look, there is now a device that is sitting and vying for your attention. If it's not your TV it's your laptop, if it's not your laptop it's your phone and so on.

We've grown so used to checking out mobile devices, that the average person needs to make a concerted effort to not check their device every 10 minutes. These habits have had a negative impact on our attention span, and made it even harder for us to be able to sit down for an extended period and concentrate.

Josh's process to help people speed up their ability to learn is based around a simple process of removing these distractions and committing yourself to regularly spending time to learn your new skill. When you first learn anything new, you are not going to be good at it, making it hard to push through, but once you get through those first 20 hours, you might surprise yourself with how good you have become in such a short space of time.

As outlined in the image below, the are four key elements in the process:

It's great to spend time researching your topic and finding out as much as you can, but jumping into actually practicing is much more valuable. It doesn't matter if you're learning coding, an instrument, management skills or how to use a new computer program, jumping in and practicing using the tools/program/skills is going to allow you to pick up the concepts much faster than reading about them.

What is keeping you from learning. Are you sitting on the couch scrolling through endless social media feeds or half watching a tv show? Instead, why not spending that tie focussing on learning something new. By turning off all of your mobile devices and your tv, you can really focus on creating a space where you can be fully immersed in your learning or practice. Try setting aside some time every day for learning. It might only be half an hour, but half an hour of fully immersive distraction free time can make a huge difference to your ability to learn!

The world we live in is full of reminders. You can't go for an hour without something popping up on your mobile device to remind you about something you should be looking at, and everywhere we look there are advertisements vying for our attention. We should learn from this and incorporate it into our learning process. Leave yourself some visual cues to remind you to commit to your daily learning or practice time. This could be as simple as leaving your laptop or a notepad on the kitchen table, but it works as a trigger reminding you that you need to spend time learning.

Learning anything new is never easy to begin with, but as you progress and spend more time understanding fundamentals and practicing your new skill, you will see vast improvement. It's important to commit t0 practicing to reach this point though. It can be easy to come home and say 'I'm feeling pretty tired tonight, i'll just skip today', but when one day turns into two days, and two days turns into a week, we are only cheating ourselves. Committing to practice can be tough, but sticking to a learning routine will yield great results.

Following Josh's steps aren't a guarantee that you will learn faster, but they will provide you with a great basis in which to go about learning any new skill doing pretty much anything! His reinforcement of committing time on a regular basis is a great way to be approaching any learning task, and but removing distractions we are letting our minds fully absorb the learning material and getting up to speed much faster.

So, what are you going to spend your next 20 hours learning? 

We are very excited to announce that Go1 will have 2 teams in this years Kokoda Challenge Walk to raise funds for the Kokoda Youth Foundation.  On June 5th our teams will set off on a grueling 30km walk which winds through some of Brisbane's toughest terrain and isn't for the faint hearted.

Established in 2004, The Kokoda Youth Foundation supports young Australians, inspiring them to do extraordinary things by challenging their deeply held beliefs, allowing them to explore their limits and abilities, and providing them with opportunities for personal growth.

Central to Kokoda Youth Foundation is the Spirit of Kokoda, embodying courage, endurance, mateship and sacrifice. These principles take their origin from Australian soldiers who fought on the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea during WWII. Still relevant today, KYF has developed programs designed to reignite these timeless values in the younger generation.

We are putting the call out to anyone who is able to donate to our teams, and contribute to the great work of the Kokoda Youth Foundation. Throughout the event, our team will be providing live updates using the hashtag #Go1KokodaChallenge across Twitter and Instagram so you can keep track of their progress, and witness the agony on their faces in real time.

If you would like to support the Go1 team, you can donate via the following links:

Click Here to support Team Go1.1 featuring Chris, Adrian, Phoebe and Doug

Click Here to support Team Go1.2 featuring David, Khoa, Eduardo and Andrew

As you can see below, our teams have been training hard for the even, so please donate to help in making a real difference to the lives of these teens involved with the youth fondations, and your local community.

Click here for more info on The Kokoda Youth Foundation

All funds raised 100% benefit the Kokoda Youth Foundation charity, which run youth programs in QLD and VIC. These programs aim to give direction and guidance to young teens through tests of physical endurance, behaviour based learning and instilling the values of the Kokoda Campaign of World War II.

The program participants are given the opportunity to earn their place in on trip to Papua New Guinea to either walk the Kokoda Track or visit the local villages and war memorials to further instil the messages shown by our Australian diggers on the Track: courage, endurance, mateship and sacrifice.

It doesn’t matter what industry you are in; sales are tough business. Over the past decade the way in which sales teams operate has evolved at a rapid pace leaving teams scrambling to stay on top of their game. Online business has been a major factor in this evolution, and now the way in which we handle our initial calls with potential customers have become more critical than ever!

Working in sales for over 10 years, I have derived a simple set of steps that are relevant to anyone in the business world and have helped elevate me towards winning some of the top sales awards in business. Like all aspects of running a business, having basic plan in place makes for a much smoother and more efficient sales call.

There are 6 steps that can be used to assist in create a road map and a clear goal for your call. By applying these 6 steps I am confident your sales process, engagement levels and meetings will start to show signs of improvement.

Step number one in the sales process should always be to establish a connection with the potential client. During an initial meeting with a client, one of our key goals is to gain their trust quickly, and this can be done in number of ways. The most common way to do this is by finding commonalties with your client. A quick and easy way to learn about the potential client is by using tools such as Linkedin and Facebook to find out more about the person and their company. If both of these options don’t give you results, you can also try Googling their name. The more we can learn about the client prior to speaking with them for the first time, the more we can tailor the call to match their needs and personality.

Another way to build rapport is discussing what you have learned in researching their company. An example of this is aligning the company’s vision and goals to that of your company. Finally, asking questions about the company and being genuinely interested in what they are doing and what they are working on will help to establish a relationship.

The second step in the sales process is to set expectations, or an agenda, for the meeting so that you are both aware of what will be covered throughout the call. This helps you establish control as well as staying focused during the meeting.

“Today I would like to cover a few things. First, to tell you a little about my company, then ask you some questions to better understand you and your business. Finally, I will be able to present a list of solutions based on your needs”.

The third step is to highlight strengths of your company. Some great details to mention are how many clients you have, names of high profile clients you work with, a brief company history, your vision, and how you stand out from the competition. During this stage it’s also helpful to include industry statistics or millstones you have achieved. The goal of this portion of the call is to increase confidence in your company and establish credibility.

The fourth stage is the most important, it’s when you gather information that will be used to introduce your product in a way that’s relevant to your client. The goal during the discovery stage is to learn as much as you can about the client and the problem for which they are looking for a solution.

The ideal conversation during this stage would involved the potential client taking the lead and speaking for around 80% of the time. There are a wide range of questions you can ask during this stage to prompt the answers you are looking for, and it pays to have a short list on hand as some clients may not be as clear in projecting their needs as others. Listening and preparing to address their specific needs is critical to this step, as they are telling you exactly what they’d like your product or service to do for them!

If you asked good questions during the previous part of your call, then this should be easy! At this stage you are selling the solution to the problem you have just discussed with your client. You want to clearly talk about their needs, and how your product/service can solve it. The goal is to give a clear and concise demo using features and benefits of your products and services that are relevant to helping address the clients need. Having a customized demo containing client logos and information is always a great thing to have prepared too.

The final stage of this process is closing the deal. Closing is asking for the sale, or progressing to next step in the process for making the sale. The next step on the process could be anything from a next meeting or arranging for a trial or signing up for the product or service. There are many different techniques in closing, and it’s important that you choose the one you are most comfortable with. During this stage we need to make sure that we give clear guidelines for the next step in the process, along with setting a timeline for when tasks need to be completed. Stay confident is the key to this stage, as our end goal is to get some sort of commitment.

There you have it. 6 basic steps to a successful initial sales call. Using this system, the more these steps are practiced and executed with clients, the more you will understand which elements work best for you and your company. Everyone has a slightly different way of doing things, but the underlying process remains the same.

Good luck, and go out and close some deals!

How to improve your sales calls in 6 basic steps

The April release of Go1 is here and includes a number of new features and improvements to make your learning experience better. This includes updates across our payment integration as well as in the display of information on courses prior to users purchasing. You can read about the full range of improvements below.

We have redesigned the course overview page, with more information about the course users are about to enroll or purchase.

If you are charging for courses in Go1, we now forward more details about each payment through to Stripe. This allow you to better see exactly what course and account each payment is for. Also, if you enable the email receipts feature in Stripe, can send payment receipt directly to users on each payment.

You find more about setting up email receipt from Stripe at https://stripe.com/blog/email-receipts

We want to ensure that our users are experiencing their training in the fastest, most user friendly and secure environment possible. To make sure this is happening, we have implemented a new feature to notify users if they are currently using an older version of their internet browser that may effect their learning experience.

Users who are using non supported browsers will now be directed to a page containing the following message:

You will need one of the following browser versions to access this portal:

Internet Explorer 10
Mozilla Firefox 40
Google Chrome 42
Safari 9 (Apple only)

Other browsers may work, but have not been tested and are not supported. 
Beta versions of browsers have not been tested and are not supported.

This release also contains a number of major backend improvements. The updates we have made in this release, and will continue to make in upcoming releases will pave the way for a faster, more scalable system for all users. It will also allow us to introduce some new course creation tools that will make building learning content easier and quicker. We will be posting more details on these in the coming weeks.

For a full list of improvements and updates since last release see the list below:

Update initial account email with clearer instructions

Parse payment information through to Stripe as Metadata, so Stripe can process receipts.

Add support for matching question to not show any feedback until the end of the quiz

Show scheduled course event date in user own timezone

Show message to users with older browsers that some features may not be supported.

Fix issue with users unable to see group posts.

Add check to ensure course end date is always after start date

When resuming quiz - show saved answers from previous attempt.

Improve UX when submitting mandatory profile form required to start course

Change ordering of my recently courses on dashboard to most recent updated

At Go1 we understand that having navigation tools that are easy to use and don't clutter up your screen make more an awesome user experience. We have already got a great menu system in place, but we have just made some changes that will make accessing different areas within the platform a lot quick and easier, as well as freeing up even more space on your screen!

To make this happen we will shortly be relocating the existing navigation menu that was previously located on the left hand side of the screen to appear at the top of the screen. This change allows users to be able to utilize a larger area of their screen while using the platform which is a major improvement, especially for our users on mobile devices or tablets.

The new navigation bar will appear whenever you are at the top of a screen, however as you start to scroll down the page, it will automatically collapse. If you would like to use the menu mid page, we've got you covered there too. All you need to do to make the navigation bar reappear is click on the button, next to the 'Dashboard' text, and your menu will reappear.

This update will not only free up more screen space, bit it will also allow for users to quickly jump between different areas of the platform such as their courses, the marketplace, and their dashboard. All page content is now set to display centered on the page in a clean and crisp format that is simple to navigate.

In order to make Go1 the best Learning Management System for our users, we are now releasing new product updates every 2 weeks containing improvements, new features, bug fixes and more. To keep up to date with these updates via our customer newsletter, please click here.

There's more space to learn with our new user menu

There are tools out there that let you build websites with simple drag and drop functionality, so why can’t you do the same thing with creating online courses? Now you can with inline editing!

So, how you can create online courses with inline editing?

As technology has developed over the past decade, we have seen a big switch across all areas of content creation that has made producing high quality material a lot quicker and easier to do. Tools are constantly being developed that are based around more visual elements and drag and drop functionality that allow the creator to witness their creation coming to life in real time. One of the areas that this style of technology has really taken off is in website design and development. First we saw the rise of WordPress: With their masses of themes and plugins, they made creating websites easy through the use of easy to use interface. While this was a giant step in the right direction for pushing out web design to the public, users still had to have some basic knowledge of code to be able to produce anything that looked amazing. While WordPress was a great starting point, there was a huge market out there of non-code savvy designers wanting to be able to create their own websites. Enter Squarespace.

Squarespace changed the way that we designed things on the internet forever. Their interface allowed users to use basic drag and drop functionality to build the most professional looking website. No coding necessary. The company exploded onto the scene as web designers all over the world realized that they may soon be out of a job. This was the beginning of the era that has seen creating content on the internet become accessible, no matter your technical skill level. You can now find drag and drop technology used across all aspects of content creation with companies realizing that it is the easiest way to be able to allow their entire market to use a product, without having done a stack of training courses or learning a programming language.

So why hasn’t this filtered down into the course creation and learning technology sector yet?

Inline editing is here. Learning Management System Go1 has been developing a range of new tools to make creating your online courses easier for the non-technical user. Seeing that most users are already familiar with other platforms online or social media, they have adapted a lot of the same creating and editing tools so users can start creating as soon as possible.

One of the most frustrating things when building anything online is jumping between your backend while making changes, and your front end to see how your final product will look. This isn’t a problem with Go1’s inline editing, as you can create and edit all of your content from within your front end meaning what you are seeing, is exactly how it will look to your users.

Images can be simply edited by clicking on a button on the header, and selecting a file, just as the titles can be updated by clicking and typing. Real time updates and display features make setting you your course very quick and easy to do without jumping around between multiple screens and clicking save to see the result of your work.

Adding content to your course has been simplified too! Gone are the days of flicking through pages to find out where you can upload your learning content. With inline editing you can add your SCORM or TinCan Files with the click of a button.

In your learner view you will find a button labeled  “+ ADD”; by clicking on this button you can bring up a menu displaying all of the types of continent that you can add.

Documents (PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint).

Just click and add your content. By clicking on any of these options you are then guided through the process required to set up your content, and then it will appear right in front of you on the page you are working from. If you already have your course content created, this means that within a matter of minutes you can now create a new course, and enroll your users. You don’t need to be a highly skilled technology expert; just a few simple clicks around you’re on your way.

This process can save hours of time in course creation and instantly allows the creator to view their work and move on to creating their next courses. As with everything on the Go1 portal, colors and logos can be set to match your company branding so your learners feel at home using the platform.

If you would like to experience inline editing for yourself, you can sign up for a free account at Go1 today.

Change the way you create online courses with inline editing

Confused about what you should be looking for when choosing a Learning Management System? Let us help you out by running through some must have features, so you are prepared as you head into the market.

You’ve heard people talking about Learning Management Systems (LMSs) for a while now, but you’re still not sure if or why you’d need one or what it can do for you. Don’t worry, when it comes to choosing a Learning Management System you’re not alone.

If you google “LMS” you will be slapped in the face with pages and pages of search results that will probably leave you much more confused than when you started, and it doesn’t need to be that hard.

A Learning Management System, or LMS as they are more commonly known, is a platform that allows you to store courses or content to train or educate your team, employees, or customers. There are currently hundreds if not thousands of Learning Management Systems on the market at the moment, but choosing the right Learning Management System for you could be the difference in saving a lot of time and money or causing you some extreme headaches.

Not all Learning Management System systems have the same offerings, so it’s important to do your research to ensure that the product that you are signing up for can fulfill all of your needs. We are going to look at some of the features that you should look out for when making a decision about choosing a Learning Management System in this article to give you an idea of what a good system should be able to do for you.


You should be able to store all of your course content within your Learning Management System for no extra charge. This includes all video and audio content, meaning that you can have all of your learning materials in one place as opposed to being hosted on a range of websites you then need to keep track of.

Mobile learning is the way of the future and if you can’t access your content through a mobile device or tablet you are drastically limiting the way that your users can learn. Bite size learning, or learning via short modules that make up a course is becoming more popular with time and being able to learn anywhere anytime means that if you have a 15mins you can learn something new.

Unlike traditional classroom based learning, with a Learning Management System users can learn at their own pace to ensure that they understand material before jumping to the next module. This isn’t to say that we are allowing learners to take months to complete a course, you can still set deadlines for courses to keep users moving along their learning pathway, but they won’t be rushed through the process because they only have a few hours in a training room to digest weeks’ worth of information.

Signing up with a Learning Management System shouldn’t mean throwing out all of your current training material because it’s too hard to recreate in your Learning Management System. Creating new courses and making use of old training material should be a simple process. Some Learning Management Systems have developed course creation tools that let you build modules in a visual way similar to that of web development tools like Squarespace. Having that visual editing tool lets the content creator see exactly what the user will see as they move through the course, and its intuitive design means that minimal backed knowledge of the system is required.

Learning pathways are the easiest way to implement a professional development plan. A learning pathway consists of a series of courses specific to the learner to ensure that any content that they are spending time learning is actually relevant to them or their department. Learning pathways are simple to create a much higher level on engagement with learners by clearly establishing a direction rather assigning courses at will.

Depending on which Learning Management System you decide to use, you may be able to access courses for free. This can play a major part in the decision making process though. If you are looking to take advantage of an extensive course marketplace stacked with courses from accredited providers, make sure that your Learning Management System has the right partnerships to provide the content that you need. If you are running with the best system for your needs, almost every course that you will ever need should be found in the one place and be available with the click of a button.

Why should you have to have a completely separate system just for your learning materials that has someone else’s logo plastered all over it? You shouldn’t. You should be able to easily include your company logos, match color schemes and design, and even embed your training platform into your current website.

Every Learning Management System tells you that they have great reporting functionality, but can you find the information that you want? Rather than only providing a basic set of standard reports for administrators to access, you should be able to choose which information you’d like to see, along with the format that you’d like to see it. Reporting is one of the most important areas for any training manager, so make sure that the system you choose can provide all of the information you require without leading you to a nervous breakdown once a month.


You shouldn’t need to spend crazy amounts of money to get your Learning Management System set up. For as low as $1 per user per month you should be able to provide the best online training for your team. Compared to onsite training, if you have an organization of more than 100 people, switching to a Learning Management System to streamline your processes can save you up to $500,000 every year!

For more insights, subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.

Looking for a Learning Management System? 9 things to consider if you’re new to the LMS World

Three financial service business directors are in a car which crashes. When they meet St Peter he asks “Did you have a business continuity plan that would work?”

There are over 20 policies and procedures a financial services business should have in place and a business continuity planning is one of them.

Preparing for disaster is not a popular task. This lack of preparedness not only threatens the viability of sectors around the world but also jeopardises the delivery of critical goods and services.

A business continuity plan should be a proactive process to ensure that the critical advisory businesses services or products are delivered during a disruption. It is worth documenting and implementing a plan that works for the business, staff and clients and not a canned solution to please the regulator.

Your business continuity plan (BCP) should include the following

• Plans for disaster or adverse event
• Measures to be taken
• Arrangements
• Identification of necessary resources ( including personnel, information, equipment, financial allocations, infrastructure protection and accommodations)

A well laid-out policy and procedure manual will help inform employees and also allow the financial services business to operate more efficiently and effectively, and a policy and procedures manual should be drawn up and distributed on an intranet to all employees.

An example of the effectiveness of having such a plan was shown when the Lion of Africa Insurance company had a fire that started around 2am on Saturday, 5th October 2013. By early morning, members of the emergency management team were onsite to assess the extent of the damage and coordinate the recovery process.

The BCP was immediately invoked and by midday, an official communication was sent out to all staff members and external parties informing them of the fire incident. The communication also reassured all concerned parties that business would continue as usual with no service interruption whatsoever. Due to this plan, on Monday 7th of October business continued uninterrupted.

Should the business continuity plan be prepared in fear of breaching compliance, or should it be completed to avoid risk?

The answer is all of the above. It’s also critical when preparing your business continuity plan to include the business managers, and reach out to staff members to gain their input. It is the responsibility of the board to see that such a plan exists. Emergency evacuation plans should be practiced so staff know what to expect if a disaster hits.

Business continuity plans are one of the speciality courses offered Naked Mindz through the Go1 platform.
You can enroll in our Business Continuity course by CLICKING HERE

Does your business have a continuity plan?

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