Digital Communication During Covid19 - Starting Up

Haroon Bijli Haroon Bijli

Haroon Bijli

Digital, Ecommerce, Social Media, Content, Marketing | Views personal

发布日期: 2020年3月15日
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We are well into the second month since the Covid19 breakout was reported in Wuhan, China; and few days since WHO declared it a pandemic. As we speak, India has crossed over 100 Covid19 infections and has declared the outbreak as a notified disaster. Several countries have set travel restrictions; many cities and states in India have shut public spaces with schools and universities closed; and many employers have administered work-from-home for their employees. The impact on the markets has been devastating. Whichever way you look at it, we’re in for the long-haul for - to contain spread and then to recover; and all indications point to the fact that it will get unevenly worse before it gets better.

Hopefully this note will help you kickstart your digital communication response to the outbreak in case you aren't on it already.

Ensure your own access to authentic information

Always refer to reliable and authentic sources of information; never to social media or unknown and unverified sources. For most businesses, there will be three reference points, WHO, the union government and the relevant local government.

Here are some links:

Is there a communication committee?

If your organization does not have a crisis management structure in place, it will be a good time to ask your management to set up an empowered committee that reports to the head of the organization. This should ideally include the heads of communication, human resources, customer care, marketing, IT and the key business heads. See this note by McKinsey. If you're a digital communicator, you should have access to the decisions made by this committee.

A best practice would be to create a Whatsapp group, Teams, Slack or your in-house collaboration tool for this purpose.

Set up an easy-to-update website page

Ideally, you’re able to publish a page on your website in a matter of minutes. Create a page with a good, short URL.

If you cannot, ask your IT support to set up a blog. A wordpress instance can be scrambled up in a few minutes. Or see what else you can set up in less than a day. Some CRM providers and productivity suites like Salesforce, Zendesk, Zoho and Google are options that you can borrow if your website doesn't allow for realtime updates.

What should you communicate?

There is some basic information that every business would need to have, and then there are industry specifics that you need to tackle.

A basic information set would contain:

  • A note from the head of the organization that acknowledges the crisis and addresses concerns that employees, customers and partners may be having. This is helpful in assuring your stakeholders that you are aware and are taking the threat seriously;
  • A set of actions that you have taken to safeguard the health of your employees, customers and partners;
  • Instructions to your employees, customers and partners, if in place. If not, links to advisory from authentic sources will be enough – see list of websites above;
  • Link to key websites such as the Ministry of Health and WHO

Depending on your industry, you would need to have the following

  • A tele or social media helpline to answer any specific queries
  • Refund and cancellation policies
  • Visa, quarantine and travel restriction in case of travel and hospitality
  • Store closure and lockdown information if you are in retail and restaurant chain business
  • Corona Virus specific quality and hygiene measures if you are in F&B
  • Business continuity plans and employee hygiene measures, meeting and travel restrictions if you are in B2B, IT and Business Support services

Ideally, these should be in a set of easily understandable and easily updated FAQs.

Some examples:

Social Media and Email

Do your frontline staff know what to communicate to their customers? A lot of responsibility for this resides with customer care if you are in a consumer-facing business. Nevertheless, if the Social Media, Social CRM and Email Marketing responsibilities rest with you, it would be a good idea if a set of updates go out to your stakeholders from these channels, in close coordination with your customer-facing ground-staff.

On social media: a discipline of timely and evolving updates with critical information is a must. Your customers need to know what is happening. It need not be elaborate and smart; timeliness and accuracy is more important than creativity

Some examples of messages put out by business leaders on social media

The opportunity for smart and creative marketing is vast but take care to be sensitive and useful, and like Augie Ray of Gartner says, "beware of virtue signalling and greed." Also read this sobering note by Benish Shah: "How to Market During A Crisis: Short Answer: Don't"

Needless to say, you ought to put your customers' needs at the center of your communication. A golden rule, but particularly in the middle of a global pandemic.

Meanwhile, the other bloggers to watch, especially on LinkedIn would be Karthik Srinivasan, Sooraj Divakaran and Prashant Naidu, to name a few.

Email: An email from your CEO to your employee, customer and partner contacts needs to be sent out earlier than later.

Ideal content for your email would be:

  • A few lines expressing sincere concern about the safety of your employees, customers and partners
  • Core content that summarizes action you’ve taken, with links to pages on your website.
  • Where employees, customers, partners could seek help and more information. If you’re addressing a specific group, like customers from a certain region, a specific loyalty program, or a product, here is where you could address them
  • A few lines that express the organizations preparedness to continue to do what they’re doing and keep monitoring
  • A sign-off expressing good wishes and a standing offer to help

 There are several good examples

The email content can also be repurposed for your website and social media.

Hope you find this useful.

This is not an exhaustive note but one that I hope will continue to grow as I get more examples and information. If you have content to share, feel free to add to the comments below, either as links or as text.

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