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A phone service interruption doesn’t stop clients from asking about market changes or following up on account instructions. However, it can prevent those requests from reaching their advisor when a response is urgent.
Indeed, calling or texting from a personal number might seem like an immediate solution. But if those conversations bypass the firm’s recording and archiving systems, supervisors could struggle to review what advisors discussed or promised.
A business continuity plan for advisor calls and text messages should address both problems. Advisors need approved channels to contact clients, and the firm needs access to the resulting records.
Here’s how to prepare alternative communication arrangements, assign responsibilities, and test that calls, texts, and archiving work as intended before an interruption occurs.
Table of Contents
1. How emergency communication can create compliance problems
2. What your backup calling and texting service needs
3. How to prepare, activate, and review your continuity plan
4. How iPlum fits into your communication continuity plan
How emergency communication can create compliance problems
Phone system failure or not, advisors need to respond to clients. However, a temporary workaround can leave the firm with missing records and business conversations it cannot review.
Let’s unpack that.
You can’t record business texts
During a phone system downtime, an advisor might use personal SMS to answer a client whose request cannot wait.
The client then replies with account details or additional instructions, but the firm’s archive does not receive that exchange.
Although the messages remain on the advisor’s device, supervisors cannot review them through the usual system.
After service returns, the firm could struggle to reconstruct the conversation, particularly if the advisor deleted messages or lost access to the phone.
Call recording stops, or recording notices disappear
When downtime interrupts the office phone service, advisors might redirect incoming calls or return calls from another number. However, the usual recording settings do not necessarily follow those conversations.
A client could give instructions during a call that the firm never records. Alternatively, recording could continue through another service, but the usual announcement might not play.
Thus, depending on the configuration, the interruption can affect the recording and the notice clients hear.
Clients continue using the advisor’s personal number
Once a client gets a text or call from an advisor's personal mobile phone, they save that number in their contacts.
Long after your office systems are restored, the client will keep reaching out to that personal line, moving business conversations permanently off your approved channels.
At the same time, during the downtime itself, clients are far more likely to ignore outbound calls from personal numbers they do not recognize.
What your backup calling and texting service needs
A backup service is only useful if it works under the conditions that interrupted your usual service. Therefore, evaluate it against specific situations outlined below:
Alternative connections for business calls
A backup calling service should give advisors alternatives to the office internet connection. We’re talking about Wi-Fi, mobile data, and carrier voice options that provide different connection methods when one becomes unavailable.
For instance, an advisor could use an available mobile connection during an office broadband downtime. However, those connections can still share the same phone provider, so a failure at that provider could interrupt both.
Texting also needs its own backup arrangements.
Text archiving that works during the disruption
Business texts sent through the backup service should be archived by the firm, along with sender and recipient details, timestamps, and relevant attachments.
Cloud archiving places stored records outside the advisor’s device. As a result, losing access to a phone does not necessarily mean losing access to previously archived conversations. Messages that have not reached the service, however, cannot yet appear in that archive.
Retention settings should reflect the firm’s recordkeeping obligations. Where required, non-rewriteable, non-erasable storage, referred to as WORM storage, protects archived records against alteration or deletion.
Automatic recording and administrator access
Recording and archiving should operate automatically under settings configured before a loss of connectivity.
Advisors can then use the approved business channel rather than activate those functions for individual conversations.
Meanwhile, remote administrator access lets authorized personnel change call routing, manage accounts, and retrieve records when the office is inaccessible.
A designated backup administrator also needs their own authorized login and authentication method. Otherwise, an unavailable administrator or lost authentication device could prevent the firm from making urgent account changes.
How to prepare, activate, and review your continuity plan
Your continuity plan should tell advisors what to do at each stage of a disruption. You need to organize those instructions around three phases as outlined below:
Before a downtime: Set up business numbers and test the arrangements
Give advisors access to their approved business calling and texting accounts before an emergency. Then, document the arrangements they’ll use if the office, their device, or the usual communication service becomes unavailable.
Assign specific duties:
- Plan activation: Name the person who decides when to move to backup arrangements.
- Call routing: Assign an administrator to redirect incoming calls to available advisors.
- Client notices: Designate who publishes service updates and temporary contact details.
- Pending requests: Assign responsibility for unanswered calls, texts, and voicemail.
Prepare short client notices in advance, with space for the affected service, alternative contact method, and expected response time.
Next, simulate a disruption. Place incoming and outgoing calls, exchange texts, and retrieve the resulting records. Test replacement-device access as well, including authentication.
Store the instructions somewhere authorized personnel can access if office systems go offline.
During downtime: Redirect calls and inform clients
First, identify what has stopped working. An office internet failure requires a different response from a downtime affecting the phone provider itself.
Activate the arrangement that matches the disruption. Where available, redirect incoming calls to the designated business numbers. If the primary provider is unavailable, use the separate approved contact method documented in the plan.
Then, issue the prepared client notice through an available channel. Explain how clients can reach the firm and when they can expect a response. Avoid promising a restoration time unless it has been confirmed.
Assign outstanding requests to available advisors. Record who owns each callback or text response so requests do not pass between colleagues unanswered.
Advisors should also document any departure from the approved procedure, including the channel used and the reason.
After downtime: Check unanswered requests and missing records
Once service returns, review requests received before and during the disruption. Confirm that an advisor has addressed each request or scheduled further action.
Next, compare the interruption activity with the available call and text records. Investigate missing conversations, failed messages, and reported use of personal channels. An absence of archived activity alone does not prove that no communication occurred.
Restore normal routing and replace temporary client notices. Finally, document what failed, assign corrections, and revise the procedures before the next test.
How iPlum fits into your communication continuity plan
iPlum gives your firm a business calling and texting service that advisors can use away from the office.
With its Enterprise recording and archiving features configured, conversations via the iPlum line can also be added to the firm’s communication archive.
That makes it useful when an office disruption forces advisors to work elsewhere. More on that.
A dedicated business number on an advisor’s mobile phone
An office closure should not force advisors to share their personal contact details with clients. iPlum’s second phone line gives them a separate business number for calling, texting, and voicemail on their existing smartphone.
Advisors can therefore respond from home or another available location using their business identity. More importantly, clients receive the business number rather than the advisor’s personal number, reducing the chance that an emergency callback starts an ongoing personal text conversation.
The arrangement works best when advisors already use their iPlum business line before a disruption. Clients then have the number saved, and advisors already know how to access their calls and messages.
Calling options and routing for alternative arrangements
An office broadband failure does not necessarily mean an advisor’s mobile voice connection has failed too.
iPlum offers voice-network and internet-data calling modes, with the iPlum number displayed as caller ID in voice-network mode.
For your continuity plan, those options provide alternatives when a particular connection becomes unavailable. It is worth noting, though, that they still require an available connection and functioning iPlum service.
Meanwhile, incoming calls need a destination that an available advisor can answer.
iPlum’s phone tree and extensions can route callers to designated users, with sequential or simultaneous ringing.
With the phone tree, your firm could arrange for one advisor’s extension to ring an alternate representative when the first advisor cannot answer. A greeting can also explain temporary service arrangements before the caller selects an extension.
Administrators can manage those call flows through the online portal. Consequently, an inaccessible office need not prevent an authorized administrator from updating the routing.
Recording and archiving for business conversations
Moving a conversation away from the office should not separate it from the firm’s recording process.
With iPlum’s automatic mobile call recording, configured incoming and outgoing calls are recorded automatically. Advisors do not have to press a recording button for each conversation.
An automated recording announcement can also notify clients at the beginning of the call. These settings give advisors a consistent process when they use their business line during a disruption.
For messages, iPlum’s WORM text archiving preserves archived business texts in a format that prevents alteration or deletion. Its financial compliance offering provides retention options of up to 10 years.
Your firm can therefore preserve conversations made through the configured service rather than depend on messages remaining on individual phones.
Furthermore, after the disruption, authorized users can access recordings through the iPlum app or portal and download audio files for review. Those records provide material for investigating client instructions and reconciling communication from the interruption period.
Wrapping up
A phone system downtime is the wrong time to decide how advisors should contact clients. Your firm needs approved alternatives, assigned responsibilities, and tested procedures before normal service stops.
Start with the essentials: where calls will go, how advisors will respond to texts, and where those conversations will be archived. Then, test the arrangements and correct any problems.
iPlum financial compliance solution provides advisors with a dedicated business line and recording and archiving options for client communications outside the office. Click the link below to add it to your continuity plan so an office disruption does not force advisors to choose between responding to clients and following firm procedures.
