Editors Note: Ironically just as last month's article on dealing with fatalities was written before the London bombings, this month's first article was written last month before the spate of plane disasters.

Dealing with phone calls in a crisis - the role of the Emergency Call Centre.

In the airline industry there is a well known emergency call centre at Heathrow Airport called EPIC (Emergency Procedures Information Centre). This was set up by British Airways but also contracted out to a number of other different airlines. The role of EPIC is to take the brunt of calls that come in during the first few days in the aftermath of a major airline incident. It is staffed by trained volunteers from within the British Airways workforce.

With aircraft carrying several hundred people, there are often thousands of calls in those first few hours and days following an incident.  These can come from family and friends, through to media, authorities, future travellers and even busybodies and cranks. Invoking EPIC takes the strain off an organisation and also allows them to carry on normal business whilst still being able to deal with the crisis. Reservations lines can continue to take new business in order to maintain the economic lifeblood of the company.

Rumour has it that British Airways recently took the decision to only allow 'One World' alliance members to have use of EPIC, so many airlines are now looking for alternative arrangements. Cruise and ferry companies also do not have the luxury of an EPIC facility, nor do tour operators.

If a cruise liner or ferry has a major incident several thousand people can be affected.  If a tour operator has a hotel fire again several hundred people could be affected. The strain on any organisation from a call handling perspective would be just as enormous.  Each person involved in your crisis will generate many phone calls, so in turn the calls received could be multiplied by a factor of at least 10.

We recognised the need at docleaf^® a few years ago and developed our own version of EPIC in order to offer this facility to our retained customers. We have recently enhanced this service with a new facility based in Cardiff (the docleaf^® Emergency Response Centre). Based very much on the EPIC model, the docleaf^® ERC can be up and running within 60mins of activation with up to 50 call handlers on line capable of handling many thousands of calls.

Trained in dealing with distressed customers, the call handlers can filter the calls and electronically update clients with a summary on an hourly basis, also patching any important calls to relevant people in your organisation such as media or family liaison staff.

Given the recent incidents involving Sharm, Kusadasi and even the London bombs, now might be the right time to review your own internal procedures and call handling capability if your organisation were involved in something of this magnitude.

If you wish to obtain more information on our facility then please click on the image below.  We would also be delighted in showing people around the facility.

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If you are "packaging" holidays then you need to be aware of "closing the loop" to help keep you out of jail.

One important aspect of Overseas Health & Safety is that of having a due diligence loop in place within your organisation. By this we mean some form of internal communication between those responsible for dealing with customer complaints and the Overseas Health & Safety team. Corporate manslaughter charges are often based on the premise of:

"prior knowledge" + "subsequent inaction" = "gross negligence".

Many times fatalities have occurred overseas involving a Travel Arranger's third party supplier where a company has made all the right moves in handling the incident and the media.  Then subsequent to this previous customers start coming forward stating they wrote in several weeks/months before the fatal incident, advising the Travel Arranger of the accident waiting to happen!

This can be particularly damning when you have expended time, energy and resources into doing the best for helping the parties involved in the incident.

The way to prevent this happening is by having a due diligence system in place whereby any Health &  Safety issues raised by customers, staff or suppliers are subsequently investigated and resolved, thus preventing any re-occurrence.

The Lyme Bay Corporate Manslaughter case in Dorset (see below) came about as a direct result of this, previous groups had complained about the safety equipment at the centre, the centre staff had sent memo's to the owner requesting the budget to purchase new equipment, all of these were ignored and unfortunately a tragic accident occurred in which four children lost their lives whilst out canoeing. The centre owner was imprisoned for 3 years.

"Death of Simon Dean and three others in March 1993

Lyme Bay In November 1994, Oll Ltd and its managing director Peter Kite was convicted of the manslaughter of four students of Southway Comprehensive School in Plymouth Simon Deane (16), Clair Langley (16), Rachel Walker (16) and Dean Sawyer (17) - who died during a canoeing trip in Lyme Regis, Dorset in March 1993. Winchester Crown court held that the group was accompanied by a school teacher and two unqualified instructors who only had basic proficiency skills in canoeing. The group was swept out to sea, and capsized frequently. The Centre had not provided any distress flares and had not informed the coastguard of the expedition. The prosecution highlighted the resignation of two instructors from the Centre a year earlier in protest at poor safety conditions. Mr Kite was sentenced to three years imprisonment (reduced to two on appeal) and the company was fined £60,000. The Centres manager Joseph Stoddart was acquitted of manslaughter."

Update on Corporate Manslaughter Convictions in England and Wales:

Number of Incidents: 14

Total number of deaths involved in these incidents: 21

Number of Companies convicted: 7

Number of Company Directors Convicted: 7

Number of Business Owners (sole traders or partners) convicted: 11


If you would like more information on how docleaf^® can help you get your due diligence loop in place, then click here or contact us at  info@docleaf.com
 

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docleaf^® CEO to become a TV star!

Watch this space for further details of an exciting new fly on the wall documentary featuring the docleaf^® CEO, David Perl. In a few weeks time Sky One / Zig Zag productions will begin filming at our Watford head office for the programme entitled 'The day you die' (very apt given the business we work in), which will be screened on Sky television.

What they will do is put our CEO through a battery of tests which allow them to predict fairly accurately his life span based on work, home-life, stress, diet, exercise etc. Then they put him through an intensive five week programme with various coaches, and try to extend his lifespan!!

Lets hope they are successful, perhaps they'll advise him not be in the Crisis Management and Health & Safety business as these are potentially both bad for your health!

Watch this space for when the show is going to be aired.
 

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ICE your mobile: (In Case of Emergency)- A very sensible idea in helping the emergency services contact your Next of Kin

The campaign encourages people to store the word ICE in their mobile phone address books, next to their next of kin's number.

From the experience of our CEO who was a formerly a doctor and with the company's experience as front-line crisis management advisors, it is all too apparent of the great challenges created when urgently trying to contact the next of kin.  this is even more so when faced with the critically injured or worse, fatalities.  Time is of the real essence, especially in the age of a global and instantaneous media who are able to transmit live pictures within moments of an event occurring.

The ICE campaign, which stands for "in case of emergency", was the idea of paramedic Bob Brotchie from Suffolk. The idea has since been backed by East Anglian Ambulance Service and later by Welsh ambulance officials. New York police have now invited Mr Brotchie to explain to officers in the United States how the idea works.

Given I have heard this from at least 4 separate sources, it may well be you have already come across this. If not, now is the time to ICE your phones! 

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Security in the Meeting Industry, November 17 & 18th of 2005

Hans Kanold, a respected colleague docleaf^® has been working hard to develop the first global security conference aimed at the hotel, meetings, travel & security industries.

This excellent 2 day event is taking place in Copenhagen on November 17th & 18th.  An additional bonus is you can hear me speak on the subject of "How to effectively manage a crisis to minimise the damage to your reputation".  This in itself has to be worth making the trip over to Sweden and do some Christmas shopping at the same time!

For the conference website and to register click here.

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