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| Our Experience |
Why You Can Rely on Us!Quality service and dependability are the reasons why over 1,300 companies have relied on us for voice talent service. The best way to describe why folks can depend on us is to give you an hour by hour description of what took place after the power outage on August 14, 2003. Most of the the Northeast United States and Canada were without power for several days. We lost our main power, but our clients didn't lose our service. It tested our back-up systems here at Speedy Spots as much as we can be tested. Here's what happened: 1. Approximately 4:30 pm on Thursday (8/14/03) power was lost in several states and Canada including Speedy Spots Studios in Chelsea, Michigan. 2. At approximately 4:45 pm our generators were in place at both our Processing Center in Chelsea and at our server location in Ann Arbor. 3. Phone lines were sporadic. We could receive a majority of calls including faxes, but were unable to dial out. 4. Our ISDN line was tested and it was found to be functioning normally. 5. Our back-up 2 way-satellite return system was tested and it was found to be functioning normally. No land lines are required for this service to operate for uploading and downloading directly to and from the satellite. 6. We used cell phones to call talents to see who had power and who did not. We found that three talents had been affected by the power outage (Scott Moore, Lyn Peraino, & Nomar Vizcarrondo). All other talents were operating normally. 7. The website was updated to reflect talent availability and to inform our clients that we were operating normally with the exception of the phone lines. 8. At approximately 7 pm we found we were unable to send or receive e-mail from our Speedy Spots server in Ann Arbor. The website was still functioning normally. 9. At approximately 7:30 pm we switched to our back-up e-mail server. The system functioned normally. All production received was delivered to talents for next morning turn-around. 10. At approximately 10 pm our website went down in Ann Arbor. We spoke to our technician and found that the Quest T-1 line had become non-functional. Our tech switched to our back-up T-1 line (Layer 3) and found it to be non-functional as well. 11. At 3 am on Friday morning we purchased gasoline in Chelsea for the generator. We had attempted to do this last night only to find that everyone from Detroit and it's suburbs were coming West to find gas to purchase and Chelsea was the first place outside of their area to have power. (Chelsea is about 60 miles from downtown Detroit). Chelsea was able to receive its electricity from a different source other than the one that left 50 million people without power. It was the only community in the area that had full power capabilities (as seen on CNN). 12. By 4:30 am we found that the phone lines had returned to functioning normally. Everything else was unchanged from the night before. 13. We called all talents with a request to send all finished production to our copper.net address. By 9 am we had received everyone's production and we began sending each mp3 as an attachment to each client. 14. Some e-mails were getting bounced back to us due to downed T-1 lines in the affected states. We were persistent and by Noon all production from the previous day had been sent. 15. While all of this was going on we were still receiving new requests for production including quick turn-arounds. We were able to receive these requests and return finished production in a very short period of time. 16. At approximately 1:30 pm our T-1 lines and website returned to functioning normally. 17. At approximately 4:30 pm normal power was returned to our buildings. All operations were now back to normal with the exception of the three talents without power (they received power over the weekend). We are very committed to our clients receiving the absolute best service anywhere. This experience invigorated us all to continue our great strides to incorporate new technologies as we find them and to never lose sight of the human factor. That means that technology can never replace a warm friendly human being. It also means that if we're not having fun with what we're doing then we must be doing something wrong. We're having a BLAST!!!!
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