Many worldwide contact centers have suffered from outages after cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike released a faulty update.
The update forced users – with Windows machines – into a recovery boot loop. As such, their devices couldn’t restart properly, leaving them with a blue screen of death (BSOD).
Mac and Linux hosts have not been impacted.
Crowdstrike acknowledged the BSODs at 01:20 ET, identified the route cause, and reversed the update. Yet, many devices already stuck in that loop had no offramp.
As a result, hundreds of IT admins – with a busy day ahead – flooded to Reddit, sharing possible workarounds to overcome the BSODs and get their business operations up and running.
Unfortunately, many of those operations are still shut down, despite George Kurtz, President, CEO, & Founder of Crowdstrike, posting on X that a fix has been deployed at 05:45 ET.
Those shut down operations include many contact centers, even emergency 911 hubs. Indeed, Alaska State Troppers posted on Facebook overnight:
Due to a nationwide technology-related outage, many 911 and non-emergency call centers are not working correctly across the State of Alaska.
Meanwhile, New Hampshire emergency services also experienced a service outage, but – as per the Department of Safety – that has now been restored.
Moreover, in Phoenix, Arizona, emergency services reported issues with their contact center operations. There, dispatchers had to handwrite information for first responders, as they could not access their usual systems after some of their desktops went down.
Yet, it’s not only emergency services; many other businesses across various sectors have reported similar problems.
The Washington Metro is one example, with its MetroAccess call center and website down. To diffuse the situation, it has pledged to contact anyone who has had a delayed trip.
Wizz Air and Turkish Airlines are other travel companies to have contact centers fall victim to the outage, with the former posting on X:
Wizz Air alerts customers to arrive at the airport at least 3 hours prior to their flight today. pic.twitter.com/YUW3BPYeRp
— Wizz Air (@wizzair) July 19, 2024
These are just some examples. In Virginia alone, a hospital, a university, and the DMV have all had their customer communications disrupted.
Thankfully, however, many worldwide customer service operations are now back up and running.
For instance, South African banks Capitec and Absa, Australian internet provider Aussie Broadband, and various UK doctors’ offices are again taking calls.
Yet, the entire episode offers a timely reminder for contact centers to dust off those business continuity plans, which proved oh-so-helpful during the pandemic.
From a broader perspective, it also provides a reminder of the risks of market consolidation in the tech space – far beyond CCaaS.
After all, in a global economy that relies on fewer big tech companies, the scope of these issues will become increasingly broad.
