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How businesses are responding

Helen • April 1, 2020

The last couple of weeks have taken a lot of adjustment for us all.

We are getting used to life under lockdown; children are being home schooled, many of us are working from their kitchen table, people are being furloughed and we quite rightly publicly thank our NHS and keyworkers with country wide clapping.

Our daily outdoor exercise time is precious, and nobody raises an eyebrow anymore when we cross the road upon meeting someone, and our weekly visit to the online pub via Zoom from the comfort of our sofas is excitedly talked about and looked forward to as though we’ve been doing this for years.

Communication has never been as important, we tune in to hear the daily updates from the UK Government, we probably speak more to our family and friends than ever before, and businesses are sending information out to their databases about changes in the way they are working.

There have been so many innovative and creative ways businesses have been able to adapt to the changes with their product and service offering. What stands out are the responses that have been human led and are putting the health and safety of their employees first and have demonstrated acts of kindness.

Some of my highlights to date have included:

Retail
  • Shutting down areas to reduce issues relating to health & safety such as café areas, beauty treatments and bra fitting
  • Supermarkets offering dedicated hours for key workers and older customers to shop first
  • Restricting quantities of sought-after items to make it fair to everyone
  • Marking out 2m spaces in queues, reducing the number of people in stores at any time and removing quantities of trolleys
  • Providing more online shopping delivery slots and prioritising people who are in the at-risk categories.
  • Non-essential retailers have expanded their online range and extended their return periods
  • Waitrose are offering a £1m community support programme
  • Café Nero are offering free coffee to medical workers
Leisure
  • Edinburgh and Chester Zoos set up live links to watch the animals from home
  • National Theatre Live are showing recordings of previous shows
  • Restaurants and bars have adapted to offer take-out services 
Hair & Beauty
  • Local salons have encouraged the purchase of gift vouchers to be used when they are open again to help them remain a viable business
Community
  • Many areas have created community support groups to help those in complete self-isolation and lock down by recruiting local volunteers who can help with shopping, dog walking, picking up medication and talking on the phone
I am a member of a world-wide networking group; our local chapter has always demonstrated a strong sense of community and that has been more apparent over the last couple of weeks. We have supported each other with daily messages through WhatsApp, phone calls to individuals when it seems like someone is struggling and sharing skills to help each adapt our business offerings at this time. We have been able to continue our weekly meetings due to the quick work by the organisation head office to adapt to an online format. We are welcoming visitors and if you are interested in joining us - drop me an email helen@marketingdoris.co.uk

Marketing Doris continues to work (safely from home) for clients - if you need support with communication messages to your market, contact me by email or call 0790 3727750

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