BUILDING TRUST WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS IN THE POST-COVID WORLD

There is still a great deal of uncertainty with everyone about what can be done, what can’t be done and how contagious coronavirus is. There is a lot misinformation and confusing rules.

To help your customers, gaining and retaining their trust is a vital element to help your business get back on its feet. To do this, you will need to allay their fears and cut through the confusion for them.

Here’s what I suggest.

The Structure

Each industry sector should look to their peak body to help them. For example, for the restaurant and café industry, it may be Restaurant & Catering Australia. For the performing arts industry, it may be Performing Arts Connection Australia. Whichever the organisation is, it should be the one that will have the most traction with your particular industry.

Engage with your industry peak body and get them to champion the cause for your industry.

It may also make sense, depending on your particular industry and the breadth of your industry peak body’s reach, to have particular sub-committees to represent particular discrete areas. For example, a sub-committee for large restaurants, one for smaller ones, one for cafes, one for takeaways, one for food-court vendors etc. Geographical regions could also be a consideration for the creation of sub-committees.

The Responsibilities

Your industry peak body should be responsible for engaging with the State/Territory and Federal Governments to understand the restrictions (and the easing of them) as it applies to your industry, industry sector or geography. They will be the logical choice to collect these “rules of engagement”, to be the point of contact to understand the government’s intention and to be updated on any changes.

Then, for each particular industry sector, taking into consideration the “rules of engagement” provided above, the sub-committee’s responsibility is to develop particular industry standards or a code of practice to deal with the post-COVID world.  

The Rules

The development of a uniform code of practice which is detailed, robust and is appropriately monitored will be key to gaining the trust of your customers.

This should include things like:

• how many customers are allowed entry into the venue
• whether the venue will only allow contact-less payment
• how often the seats, door handles etc are cleaned
• what is used to clean the venues
• what happens if the government’s contact-tracing app identifies the venue as being exposed to coronavirus
• how often will a venue’s staff member be tested for COVID-19
• what happens if a venue’s staff member is tested positive for COVID-19
• what is the minimum personal hygiene regime for each of the venue’s staff members
• what the venue’s requirement is on staff members wearing gloves and masks 
• how often are the gloves and masks required to be replaced

The detail required here will be dependent on your particular industry as well as what sector within that industry your business sits within but could also be dependent on the geographical location of your business as well.

The Administration

To keep and maintain the trust of your customers, your particular code of practice must include:

• details on how regularly it is updated to reflect any changes to the restrictions placed by the State/Territory and Federal Government
• how often the venues are audited to determine compliance, including the penalty for breaches by that venue operator

A good practice, prior to launching your code, is to seek endorsement by your State/Territory government official and maybe even the relevant Federal Government minister.

The Marketing

The next step then, is to make sure the details of your code are publicised. A simple website with some basic information about the code could be made available to the public, including a short advertising campaign. The important information that your customer’s will need to know should include things like:

• the object of the code – to keep your customer’s safe
• that the code meets and exceeds the State/Territory and Federal government’s recommendations
• that the code has been developed specifically for that particular industry sector/geographical region etc
• that compliance with the code is regularly audited
• details of the penalty for non-compliance
• providing a list of businesses who are code-compliant which is regularly updated

To make things easier for your customers, it would be a good idea to develop some sort of simple indicator that your venue or business is code-compliant – like a marker (similar to the National Heart Foundation’s tick of approval symbol) , which can be affixed onto your business’ marketing material (website, menus, programs etc) and on the venue itself – on doors etc. Something that will help your customers know that your business is “COVID-Safe Code Compliant!”.

The Hope

Building and maintaining trust with your customers will be critical to ensuring the survival of your business. 

I believe that by allaying the potential fears of your customers and by giving them certainty and confidence that your business is safe and has a process in place to deal with any COVID-related concern will go a long way to bringing your business and your particular industry back on its feet.