When the unexpected happens: what operational resilience really means for customer experience

Organisations today face a plethora of risks that could put their ability to function in jeopardy, and customer service teams are often the first to feel the impact when something goes wrong. That’s why many companies are starting to move away from location-dependent models and towards more distributed ways of running support.

 

Businesses today operate in an unpredictable landscape. Geopolitical uncertainty makes for a difficult trading environment, while cyber-attacks – such as the recent incident at Jaguar Land Rover which saw operations suspended for a month, leading to a £485 million pre-tax loss for the quarter – have the potential to cripple businesses entirely. Catastrophic weather events such as hurricanes or floods, and power outages that often follow, can also wreak havoc, particularly for those with operations in parts of the world that are most susceptible.

 

The State of Resilience 2025 report stated that 100 per cent of organisations surveyed experienced revenue losses as a result of outages in the past 12 months, with each incident ranging from $10,000 to in excess of $1 million. It’s no wonder that 93 per cent of leaders admit they are concerned about the financial and organisational impact of outages.

 

Customer service operations are particularly vulnerable to external disruptions, and the impact often goes far beyond the immediate financial hit. When these teams are unavailable, customers feel it straight away, because this is where they turn for help with real, time-sensitive needs such as tracking a delayed delivery, rebooking travel or regaining access to an account or service. If support is slow or unavailable at these moments, the damage isn’t just operational, it shapes how customers remember the experience. And once that trust is shaken, the reputational impact can linger long after systems are back online.

 

Yet many organisations’ customer experience operations remain heavily concentrated in individual locations, leaving them exposed to outages. That risk became reality for Vistaprint, a global provider of customised print and marketing materials, when Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica in October 2025. The storm took down the company’s call centre, leaving the business without a large part of its customer service capacity, which at the time was handled in-house.

 

The tragedy occurred as Vistaprint was preparing for its busiest time of the year in the lead-up to Black Friday and the holiday season. As a result, the company faced not only operational challenges but also heightened commercial and reputational risk.

 

Research by Accenture underscores the scale of that risk: as many as 87 per cent of customers will leave for another organisation after receiving a poor customer service experience. Being unable to get the help they need during a crisis only exacerbates frustrations. For instance, organisations find themselves needing to rapidly resource more staff when product recalls hit, as they are suddenly faced with high volumes of customer interactions.

 

Mike Ortegon, global customer solutions at yoummday, believes organisations need to be more aware of the risks they face when basing customer experience resources in one place or region. “Customer experience operations are often designed for efficiency and steady-state performance, not failure scenarios, particularly among mid-sized companies with limited redundancy,” he says.

 

Even where organisations have multiple locations, these are often in the same geographic region, and in many cases these locations are vulnerable to geopolitical disruption. “We have had cases where clients have built two call centres, in places with a high probability of weather disaster, and both have got knocked out the same time because no one thought about the possible impact,” adds Ortegon. “But building redundancy across multiple regions requires investment, planning and ongoing operational complexity, which are resources that many organisations simply don’t have.”

 

CX outsourcing as a buffer against operational shocks

 

In response to the growing risk of basing customer experience centres in vulnerable locations, many businesses are now moving away from location-dependent models altogether and partnering with specialist providers. Distributed, remote-first customer experience models reduce dependency on physical locations and allow organisations to draw on a global network of service agents, who can provide round-the-clock support without the burden of managing operations in-house.

 

“One of the beauties of geolocating globally is that you can find expats living across the world, who can serve you in the region where you really need them, because of cultural fit or knowledge of the product or region,” adds Ortegon. This means customers can draw on people with experience of specific markets, he adds.

 

That approach proved critical in helping Vistaprint stabilise operations. It turned to yoummday, a customer experience provider built around a globally distributed, fully remote network of vetted freelance agents. Freelance platform models are already widely used across industries because they allow businesses to scale their support on a demand-based basis, without being tied to long-term staffing commitments. In this case, agents had already been recruited and onboarded to the platform, meaning they could opt into projects that matched their experience or be invited to support specific needs. This significantly reduced the time needed to move from setup to handling customer enquiries.

 

Because the work is largely part-time, capacity could be increased quickly during peak periods by offering agents additional hours, then scaled back once demand eased. Within just two weeks of the initial discussions, agents were onboarded, trained and handling live calls, emails and chat requests for Vistaprint, well ahead of the Black Friday rush.

 

“The trust and exceptional customer focus I experienced from both sides is something that makes me incredibly proud,” says Karsten Westermann, Director, Global Quality and Learning at Vistaprint. “Throughout the engagement I felt a highly positive ‘we can make it happen’ attitude.”

 

Building readiness before disruption hits

 

Mitigating the risk of natural disasters or political upheaval is not the only reason why many organisations are concluding that it makes sense to partner with a specialist. For some, seasonal demands mean inevitable fluctuations in staffing levels throughout the year. “It gives businesses the ability to scale up when needed, but also down,” says Ortegon.

 

In the modern world, disruption is inevitable. But business failure is not, and responsible leaders are taking action to ensure they are prepared for whatever might occur. Ortegon’s advice to businesses that currently host their customer experience operations in-house is to think about whether they would be able to cope should a disaster or other significant event hit, and put in place arrangements now that could be ramped up should this happen.

 

“The strength of our model is that we take that stress away,” he points out. “If something takes your service down suddenly and you have relied only on your in-house team, that’s a really stressful situation to be in. If you already work with a provider, you have a stable business, no matter what happens.”

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To find out more about how yoummday restored customer support for Vistaprint – and how it could help you build resilience into your CX operations – visit www.yoummday.com