Why Customer Communication is Important Amidst the Coronavirus Crisis

Today's topic is this: proactive client/customer/consumer communication. 

So obviously, all that you're hearing about, all that you're seeing is all things coronavirus. We're seeing the stock market ups and downs, we're seeing panic, we're seeing schools closing, businesses closing and really it's state by state and even community by community. 

There's really no rhyme or reason necessarily, other than people going obviously on guidelines from the medical professionals and I never will pretend to know anything about what I'm talking about when it comes to that stuff. 

What I can tell you that I am seeing is two completely different types of businesses. The first type of business is borderline paralyzed. And it doesn't matter what niche they're in or what status they're in, or how many employees are really, it doesn't matter. I'm seeing a lot of businesses that are literally paralyzed. They don't know what to do. They don't know what to say, they don't know how to act. So they kind of continue as if it were business as usual. But it's not business as usual. I don't think we've ever seen anything like this. Maybe way back when but I know that in my lifetime, I have never seen it where schools were being closed for a month, two months, three months ahead of time, where people were being told they can't drive. 

Yesterday, San Francisco essentially said no one can go anywhere, you've got to stay home - mandatory quarantine or lockdown, essentially. So it's not business as usual. 

What you need to start doing this week is you need to start looking at how you can communicate and what you should communicate. Your step one is I need you to make sure that you've got all of your current prospects, information, and all of your current customers information. Ideally, you've got cell phone numbers. Next option would be emails. Worst case would be you only have physical addresses. 

But what I'm looking for you to do is to start to formulate your messaging to let your customers and your prospects know whatever the current status of your business is now. If there are mandatory closures, for example, you need to start communicating to your customers, letting them know that things are either okay or things are not okay, your business. And in this kind of time, you want to make sure that you're just completely transparent. You want to make sure that you're completely fluid, you're just not sugarcoating things if your business is not doing well and you don't think you can weather the storm, you're gonna have to start putting stuff out there. 

Gyms for example. No one's going to the gym or very few people will. So what are these gyms going to do if they've got expensive leases and rent? And how do their staff get paid if they don't have any people to pay? Like there's a lot of different things that are obviously going on. But rather than being paralyzed about the situation, we'll talk further about what other options and opportunities are out there and all of that stuff. 

But what I'm interested in is that you need to put together all of your prospects and customers and you just need to start communicating and give them the truth. Give them the raw version. Let them know what you're doing. If you're staying open, letting them let them know about your cleaning protocols, let them know that you're testing the temperature of your staff and you're making sure that no one is walking in sick in your business and that no one is allowed to walk in your business that has been traveling to Xyz places. 

If you're a restaurant, you need to start offering takeout. How are you going to do that? Are you posting things here? Are the recipes changing? How are you getting the food?

Is the food inspected? Who's touching that stuff? 

You need to be communicating more than you ever have been before because now if you've got the lion's share of people going and working from home and working remotely, they're sitting around and all they can do is either work or play with their kids.

You've got to make sure that you're proactively putting out information. And it could be changing throughout the day. Let people know that while this social media post is being put out at nine o'clock in the morning, for example, it very well could change by noon or later in the day. But as long as you're being proactive about it, you're showing your customers that you're being a leader, that you're taking a stance. We work with a lot of childcare centers, and very few of these childcare centers are closing unless they're being forced and mandated to close. They are remaining open because they have to serve the community. If everyone now is working from home and working remotely, who's going to watch their kids, it's close to impossible to work from home. If you've got a couple of kids running around in the background. It's just not going to work. And while a lot of them initially didn't really want to say anything because we're trying to figure this situation out a bit. 

They've now started to communicate. They're putting stuff up on social media, they're getting out emails and text messages and things like that to their families. They're getting all of that stuff out there. They're being proactive. That is the main message for today. 

Take a look at what content you can get out there, what channels you have available to you and start to take some action today, not a week from now, because the situation will have evolved another time. Continue to evolve with it. But stay proactive in how you communicate.