COVID-19 has recently affected many businesses causing some to limit their operations or close down temporarily. Depending on what type of business you have, you may be unsure of what steps to take to support your customers at this time. Here are some ways you can curb the distress that they might feel.

1. Be Transparent
By now, most people are already aware of the gravity of this pandemic. Everyone understands that certain businesses will be limited in their service. If your company is doing anything related to the crisis, make sure to let your customers know. Inform them of any changes such as limited office hours, grace period for billings. Maybe you want to devote your marketing budget to frontliner donations for now. Whatever it may be, let them know. Customers need transparency and will be more understanding if you have any shortcomings.

2. Enforce Good Hygiene Practices
If your business has a physical store, make sure you are following best practices for avoiding the virus --have sanitizing products ready to use at the front of the store, let your employees do social distancing, put up signs for where customers can wash their hands, etc. Customers will appreciate the measures you have taken to protect them and your employees from getting infected.

3. Take Advantage Of Automation
Letting your employees work from home is one of the best things you can do right now. But aside from that, you can also take advantage of automation. Automation can help lighten the load as you focus on finding solutions to problems that your business might be facing.

For example, you can use a chatbot to answer questions fast on your website. It can cater to multiple queries at once without taking up a lot of time. You can even automate your other business tasks such as payroll, social media, and email responses. A quick online search will help you find the right tool that can automate almost any task you can think of.

4. Get On Social Media
If you’re already on social media, now is the perfect time to ramp up your presence there. During this time, people are stuck in their homes and they’re checking their phones more frequently. Take advantage of this by posting more content. You can post positive stuff that can help lighten up people’s moods. You can also post updates on what your business is doing related to the virus or developments on the pandemic itself.

5. Focus On Your Digital Channels
Aside from social media, you can further expand your presence in other digital channels such as email newsletters, webinars, vlogs, instant messaging, blog posts, and more. Provide access to some of your exclusive content or consider ramping up your content production. This gives customers something to do and allows more chances for them to interact with your company.

6. Offer Deals
Encourage some shopping while your customers are at home. You can do this through discounts and deals that are difficult to resist. This helps keep your sales going and gives customers something to be happy about during this hard time.

7. Limit Non-Essential Campaigns and Launches
Right now, people don’t care if you have a new product to launch or that your company has grown into 50 branches in the last five years; they are focused on the current situation. As much as possible, you want to limit press releases to only the most relevant ones. People’s emotions are at an all-time high right now and if they sense you piggybacking on the pandemic or displaying insensitivity, there’s a huge chance you’ll get some negative feedback, or worse, boycotted.

We hope these tips can help you in this especially difficult time.
Please check back often to our COVID-19 Special Response page for updated information about all the packages and programs the government is working on.