What can smaller, newer, more vulnerable businesses do to strengthen relationships with consumers when social distancing has minimized or eliminated personal interaction?

5 key strategies acronym (Acrunum) HEART stands for:

Humanize your company
Educate about change
Assure stability
Revolutionize offerings
Tackle the future

How can we humanize our company to let consumers know we care about them more than profit?

By letting them know the Company understands and cares about social issues at stake during this difficult moment. Explaining how you are helping your customers, employees and others.

Using company social media sites and customer mailing list to send short but targeted messages to make customers understand the value you are creating for them.

Eg. Restaurants in the US are using front house staff to deliver food rather than outsourcing to delivery services. Familiar servers delivering familiar menu items help clients feel reassured and comforted and reinforces loyalty reminding them what they loved about the restaurant before the crisis. 

How can we educate consumers to interact with the changes to our business?

By letting them know about changes to your business, including new hours, staff reductions, customer service availability and ordering option.

Eg. Apple had understood that store closings were coming, and they closed their stores before the government ordered it. They used their customer list to encourage online shopping, emphasizing their convenient return policies and responsive call services that could help customers with problems and questions

In which way will we be able to continue to provide the things they have come to know and love of our business?

Eg. Explaining how, despite the disruption in how you operate, you will continue to provide the things they have come to know and love — the reasons they patronize your business instead of others. If consumers value the impeccable quality of your goods or the thoughtful nature of your customer service, tell them how will you maintain those value propositions for the future.

Q. They say "Chaos also presents opportunity” so why not opportunity for innovation? How can we let our clients know how we are trying to give them new products or services that solve new problems ? Answer: By telling your customers how you are serving them in new ways by offering new products or services that solve a new problem. Eg. 180 top fashion houses guaranteed over 2 billion surgical masks while famous perfume companies produced hand sanitizer when shortages appeared. Companies that take these measures, and let consumers know about them, will inject hope into their hearts, as they see how companies are developing ways to make their lives better. Doing so offers the added benefit of further humanizing a company.

Q. How can we signal that our company will come out stronger on the other side of the storm and that the temporary improvements to satisfy customers may become permanent improvements to our business model in the future?. Answer: By demonstrating going above and beyond in various ways. Making it evident that your company is well-positioned to maintain its revised business model until things return to normal, signaling that it is weathering the storm. Moreover, highlighting what your company has learned from the pandemic experience, as well as how these learnings might improve the way your company operates after the pandemic ends. Signal that your company will come out stronger on the other side of the storm. The temporary improvements that satisfy customers now may become permanent improvements to your company’s business model in the future. This will inspire confidence. The key here is to signal that your company is taking ownership of the situation, as much as possible, rather than allowing the situation to take ownership of your company and its valued customers.