Canadian Blood Services will implement a two-site National Contact Centre

Primary location will remain in Sudbury with secondary location in Saint John, New Brunswick

June 29, 2012 (OTTAWA) - Canadian Blood Services announced today plans to implement a two-site National Contact Centre model in order to provide greater business continuity protection. The primary site will continue to be at the current location in Sudbury, Ontario while the secondary contact centre will be located in the existing Canadian Blood Services facility in Saint John, New Brunswick. Canadian Blood Services places great importance on business continuity planning to ensure that it is able to maintain critical functions during crises which might disrupt its regular operations. By having a functional secondary site, Canadian Blood Services would be able to preserve its ability to maintain critical National Contact Centre activities.

“We identified many important considerations for the selection of the second site of our national contact centre, such as the availability of a bilingual work force, sufficient geographical protection against crises which might impact a large area and the accessibility of contact centre expertise,” said Ian Mumford, Chief Operating Office for Canadian Blood Services. “After careful review of the criteria and the availability of a Canadian Blood Services facility in which the contact centre operations could be housed, Saint John emerged as the best choice.”

Canadian Blood Services anticipates opening the second contact centre in Saint John on or before July 1, 2013. The current contact centre work will be re-distributed between the two sites with Sudbury remaining the primary location. Operations at the second contact centre site will be established on a phased-in approach. The split of operations over two contact centres will be transparent to donors.

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