Just a few weeks ago, the Covid-19 crisis was mostly confined to China, but now it’s a global pandemic with unprecedented effects. Amongst the threat to human lives, businesses around the world have been affected. Having unpredictable external factors affecting your business can be scary and very frustrating, especially as we don’t currently know the full extent of the impact this global crisis is going to have. But don’t worry, and we are here to help you prepare.
Businesses all of a sudden require new strategies and, most importantly, more empathy towards their employees and customers. Among all the other industries, maintaining a business for corporate travel companies has been the toughest. Why? Because all the big companies are banning non-essential travel, resulting in low business and revenues for corporate travel companies.
Swiss food giant Nestle restricted its 291,000 employees worldwide for domestic business travel and halted international travel until March 15. French cosmetics maker L’Oréal, which employs 86,000 people, issued a similar ban until March 31.
Amidst these crises, businesses that depend on corporate travel are in hot water. They need better customer service strategies to retain customers and rise above this temporary setback.
In this blog, we are highlighting some tips to win your existing clients in this crucial time and deliver top quality service to keep them engaged.
Sometimes the information is flowing from all the directions, and it gets tough to distinguish between facts and speculations. As a company, what you can do is to keep your clients posted with the real facts that you verified by your own sources. This way, you can gain their trust and establish credibility in their minds. As a responsible company, when you read any latest news about travel safety or bans, think critically about the source of the news before acting on it.
Another right way to tackle any crisis is to build a small, trusted team inside the organization and give them enough liberty to make critical decisions quickly. During such emergencies, each day brings a new event, which has to be handled rapidly but professionally. Training your response team on how to handle any situation professionally is crucial. Hence, they employ an iterative and empirical approach to understand the scenario and come up with an appropriate response.
Your team’s email response time holds the utmost importance every time of the year but, in crises, it can make or break your company. The worst thing you can do to a panicked customer is not responding to him. The goal of your team should be to provide the best customer service in the wake of this epidemic, so none of your clients feel that they are not being heard. For example, if your team usually takes 48 hours to close a ticket, move it to a 24-hour cycle or maybe even sooner.
Business is all about revenue; we get it. However, in a critical situation like this, a good strategy is to reshift your focus from numbers to empathy. Every crisis provides an opportunity for learnings and a framework for policies to be revised. Hence, as a business, review and reconsider your existing policies to put customer safety first. One good example is to assure full returns and refunds if things go haywire.
It is probably the most bare-bone thing to say, but it is fundamentally essential considering the news where people are auctioning the packages of masks on the internet. As a business, running campaigns to offer deals and discounts is not ethically right in these situations; rather, think about measures to protect your team, clients, and the community.
Although all crises are unpredictable, they leave learnings and reflections for companies. It is imperative to establish rapid-reporting cycles at this stage so that you can understand how your business is being affected and what are the challenges that you may want to avoid in the future.
Right now is the perfect chance to look at everything with a fresh perspective. Companies show their weaknesses in crisis, and only good companies learn from those. At this point, focus on providing the best customer experience and develop new approaches, products, and services to grow loyalty with your existing clients.
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