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Covid-19 challenges: Strategic ways to minimize the impacts of Covid-19

April 28, 2020

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The whole world is struggling with the outbreak of Covid-19 as well as its significant effects. In a recent survey carried out by PwC, 73 % of global chief financial officers expressed their concern about the Covid-19 challenges with the decrease in business’s revenue.

Prevention measures, social distancing and concern about sanitation issues force businesses to find more efficient ways to overcome Covid-19 challenges. They are in need to build strategies and tactics to respond the widespread impacts of the pandemic.

This article is born for the purposes of analyzing several Covid-19 challenges that most companies encounter and suggesting some ways to fall the effects of Coronavirus.

Table of Contents

Covid-19 challenges of most businesses

The outbreak of Covid-19 is considered a serious pandemic in a global scale. WHO has recently confirmed the “very high” global risk of Coronavirus for humans in general and for businesses in particular.

Covid-19 challenges forces companies and businesses to consider useful methods to protect the health and safety of staff in the workplace. At the same time, you also need to make sure the continued operations of businesses.

Here’s are several Covid-19 challenges:

Disrupted Supply Chain

With the spread of Coronavirus, the lockdown has been imposed in many regions all over the world. Thus, the supply chain is also disrupted and it becomes one of the great Covid-19 challenges.

A recent report from Fortune showed that 94% of Fortune 1000 companies are struggling with coronavirus supply chain disruptions.

The complex situation of Covid-19 has greatly decreased the supply chains that begin or go through in countries or areas with confirmed affected cases.

Companies still need to deliver goods and services speedily and safely to customers who are at the high risk of virus infection.

Managers have to take right actions to ensure the flows of goods and items. At the same time, they also should protect the safety and health of their staff, supply chain workers and the whole community.

Companies need to quickly respond to the current disruption and improve business operations to prepare for the further risks.

You can consider the usage of digital technology to control the goods flows, You also have to find new ways to minimize the disruptions and implement effective methods of delivering goods in the midst of Coronavirus.

Lack of physical contact

Imagine the time before Covid-19 appeared. It was easy and free for companies and customers to meet face-to-face. People could go out whenever they wanted.

But everything changed since the outbreak of Coronavirus.

Social distancing prevents both companies and customers from physical contact. Both workers and customers are forced to stay or work at home and avoid meetings with more than 2 participants. Some stores are still allowed to open but the number of customers in a stored is limited.

Dealing with Covid-19 challenges, it is urgent time for companies to change the ways to communicate with customers. Setting up online meetings through advanced and high-tech tools is a good idea at the times of crisis.

Lack of physical contact due to Covid-19 challenges

Let’s have a look at an example of banking industry.

Due to the impacts of Covid-19 as well as social distancing restrictions, many banks plan to build digital channels to meet the demands of customers and increase the efficiency of quickly responsive working groups.

Well, a superb choice to respond to Covid-19 challenges!

Pressure of changing sale tactics to a new way

Despite the great impacts of Covid-19, customer demands still don’t change. They still have demands for daily purchases. But the social distancing makes it challenging for them to buy whatever they like.

Clearly, traditional methods of selling is no longer effective during the time of Covid-19. Companies should consider re-organizing the business operations from working at the workplace to working at home.

Covid-19 challenges ask businesses to adapt to a new selling pattern. And online selling is a perfect decision for retailers and companies.

Online selling is a common way to face Covid-19 challenges.

Obviously, the pandemic motivates to create a different way of commerce innovation. Those who consider ecommerce as secondary channel must rethink about its benefits.

It is necessary for companies to rearrange their business strategies based on digital commerce.

Inefficiency in information update

In the times of crisis, customers may concern whether your stores are still open or not. Customers may find troubles in accessing to new products and items of your businesses if you don’t update necessary information regularly.

To be efficient, customer contact must be done regularly and on time. Companies can start communicating with customers through omni channels from website, emails, social media to your stores and outlets.

Responding to Covid-19 challenges

To overcome the impacts of Coronavirus, LandofCoder will introduce several strategies to face Covid-19 challenges and sell better:

Keep stayed with loyal customers

In the mist of Covid-19, many companies turn to taking care of existing customer by offering them multiple additional services. Banks offer discounts in fees or charges and restaurants provides customers free coupons.

Several plans you must try to attract loyal customers and face Covid-19 challenges:

Offer rewards and discounts: Your companies can keep contact with potential customers by allowing customers to increase earned/redeemed points and get gift cards. During the time of Covid-19, LandofCoder offer a 30% discount for all Ecomteck Magento 2 extensions available on the site.

LandofCoder's 30 SALE-OFF to deal with Covid-19 challenges

Give loyal customers a priority about goods and items. Existing customers can purchase your products in a big quantity than newcomers who only search for a single item.

Be ready to support customers with financial burdens: You can provide customers with extra return options or extend the dates of invoice payment.

Optimizing your websites

To deal with the supply chain disruptions, you should take actions to optimize your website. A research shows that a 1 second delay in page response can decrease conversions by 7%.

Below are three methods your companies can apply to optimize your websites.

Stabilize infrastructure: Consider carefully when choosing your website host. The right website host will help companies to avoid lackluster resources in the seasonal peaks

Load balancing: A useful way to decrease the pressure of just one machine. Load balancing divides the pressure into multiple machines to keep stable performance.

Lazy loading: Get rid of the whole page loading nightmare with lazy loading. It breaks the loading up into smaller chunks, so customers won’t cost time for long wait.

Adapting to online tips to face Covid-19 challenges

Absolutely, we should limit physical contact and gather. So, moving customers to online shopping website is a good choice.

Sinead Scrivener, Fastparts Operations Director said:

“We are still open for now and trying to operate to somewhat normal levels, but at the same time keep our staff and customers safe. The web store has been a big help already in making this happen and I’m sure it will continue to be.”

Though some customers get used to buying online, some may find it hard at the first time.

Here are some ways you can give them a hand:

First, tell them your current operation status. You need to tell customers that your online websites are still open, even if your physical stores already closed.

Assign a representative for every online store: The person is in charge of contacting with customers and help them in setting up online account.

Support them in accessing to the website and goods order: Some companies apply the “impersonate a customer” feature. So, the website staff can access to the website store of your customers and help them when needed.

Checkout Covid 19 business relief plans | Strategies and resources for further Covid-19 plans.

Conclusion

The pandemic is causing a lot of difficulties to many companies all over the world. The blog is a collection of Covid-19 challenges and creative plans to overcome the times of crisis.

Wanna more information, please check out our blog page to get 24/7 support service.