Here’s How to Adapt Your Marketing Strategy Amid COVID-19. It’s no doubt that the world is in the middle of a crisis situation. For business owners, this means rapid response and proactive planning if you’re going to hit your key results. Since you, like many others, are responding to COVID-19 in real-time and may have had to shutter your business, there are a few digital best practices that help keep you moving in the right direction.
Focus on goal-setting.
The key results you were targeting in Q1 2020 likely don’t factor into your current strategic plan. In fact, many, if not all of your strategic objectives and goals have likely shifted. Take this time to reassess your key results and get your team members in alignment. Review your current analytics and see what is reasonable for your business moving forward. Does this involve leaner employee engagement? Do you need to redouble your efforts on social media? Do you have the right individual objectives and companywide strategic objectives in place? Asking all of these questions can help you remain afloat and even encourage moderate business growth.
Something that can help is OKRs software. OKRs—objectives and key results—are used to track some critical key performance indicators and are useful for performance reviews. You can see where your team members are struggling and help them adjust to the current economic landscape. You can also help them tailor their individual objectives to better suit today’s climate. This will help prevent burnout and ongoing frustration if loftier, more ambitious goals aren’t met. Workboard, an OKR software company, has been engineering OKRs and flexible employee performance management software to suit businesses of all sizes. This OKR methodology can help you with your employee engagement and overall marketing strategy.
Rethink customer service.
With so many businesses operating under extreme circumstances, many are struggling to maintain and improve the customer experience. Many contact centers and call centers are struggling with higher-than-average call volumes. Traditional call centers are finding it difficult to function with social distancing guidelines in place. Luckily, with a robust internet connection and a virtual call center solution in place, you can keep call center operations running more smoothly and maintain high customer satisfaction. A virtual contact center improves the customer experience by using technology like Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and AI to more effectively route calls to the right agent. IVR can also take customers through menu prompts to acquire basic identifying information so they don’t have to spend time on the phone relaying this information.
Unlike a traditional outbound call center, a virtual call center can also use dialers to reach out to customers. Digital queues help ease the lengthy hold times imposed by COVID-19. A virtual contact center also improves contact center operations by reducing strain on agents which is critical in the current landscape. If you’re interested in a virtual contact center or other contact center solution, there are a few things to keep in mind. You’re going to want to pair with a trusted virtual call center solution that has performance handling higher volumes of inbound calls. You should also look for a virtual call center solution that uses technological advancements like IVR, AI, and digital queues to make the job of your customer service representatives a little easier. Lastly, since finances might be tight at the moment, it doesn’t hurt to seek out a software program that offers a free trial so you can see if it will be a wise investment.
From OKRs to virtual call centers, there are ways to handle the stresses of owning a business during COVID-19. There are still ways for you to market more effectively and achieve key results. You may simply need some patience to find the right ones.