Helping Your Business During COVID-19
Tuesday, March 17th, 2020
At WebLeaps, we are here to help your business as much as possible during the COVID-19 outbreak. We know that things can change quickly, and these are not normal times for any of us. It is very important though as a business owner to be sensitive, have empathy and be transparent with your customers. If you are putting out any updates, we want to ensure that they are accurate. One day you may have modified business hours, and the next you may close, that information needs to be updated in real time for your customers. If that does not happen, and for example you send out an email about a promotion to come into your business, but you are closed, it can lead to confusion with your customers. Even if you are closed, it can give customers the perception that you’re not being sensitive or following guidelines/requirements.
We have emailed all of our recurring maintenance clients individually and have asked you to send us any updates on your business as they become available. We will be using these updates in place of your regular updates (or scheduled promotions) whenever possible to keep your fees low. We ask for all updates to be fully written out in a digital format and sent to us via email. This is not our area of expertise either, so we do not want to speak incorrectly on your behalf.
For any of our other clients that do not have regular maintenance, we encourage you to send updates as needed as well but will be subject to our standard rate. If it is something as simple as a paragraph of text to be posted to your website/social media, this can be done in as little as 5 minutes. We want to assist you as best as possible, not have you incur any additional financial burdens, but encourage you to keep your customers updated regularly so they know what to expect.
Updates can include, but are not limited to: Extra cleaning procedures, modified hours of operation, temporary closures, etc.
We suggest that you utilize all available mediums when updating your customers, we can do this for you, or we encourage you to do it yourself when possible:
Website
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Email Newsletters
Google My Business
If you do decide to close your business temporarily, there are ways to substitute content to keep your customers informed and engaged.
1) Keep them up to date on the status of your business and when you expect to reopen. Update all mediums once your business reopens.
2) If you sell digital gift cards this is a great time to promote them. It is a way for customers to support your business.
3) When posting on social media and your website, since you’re not wanting customers to stop in or call, but you can still give tips & information.
4) If customers can communicate with you at all – please let them know that. Whether it’s by email or phone. And if you do not plan on answering emails until your business is reopened, or you expect your replies to be delayed, set up an autoresponder on your emails. If you have hosting with us, we can walk you through how to do this.
But most importantly we (Eric and Andrea), want to personally say that we hope that you remain safe during this time. We do not have a physical retail location so we will be working remotely, and will be doing our best maintain these changes as they come. Thanks for your understanding regarding this.
