How Should You Communicate With Customers During COVID-19?

There’s no doubt that the COVID-19 outbreak has changed the way in which both individuals and brands are communicating. In this challenging time it can be difficult to know the best way to reach out to your clients or customers, or even to decide whether you should.

While it’s certainly important to hit the right tone, it’s also important to stay in touch and remind people that you’re there for them - especially if the services or goods that you offer could be useful to people at this time.

A recent article for Business2Community explored how you should navigate brand communications during this period. Of course, if you want some assistance with your content creation in London , we are always here to help.

One of the keys is tackling all of your brand communications in a sensitive way. The news provider advised against making light of the situation or using humour, even if this is normally how you’d talk to your customers.

It pointed out that it’s better to take a more serious tone than to crack jokes that you have to apologise for later, and that will more than likely cause serious harm to your brand.

“We recommend keeping a positive, inspirational and helpful tone. Avoid being humorous, witty or casual,” the article stated.

However, it added that it’s fine to look on the bright side, but that it’s important you make the distinction between positivity and humour. One thing you want to avoid at all costs is coming across as though you’re dismissive of the situation.

It’s also a good idea to double check any content for potentially insensitive words - avoid the likes of contagious, killer or infectious, for example, when you’re writing copy.

If you’re going to be sending out communications about Coronavirus, it’s essential that you get your facts right and that you check they are still accurate when you’re about to publish the content. Things are changing quickly, so you don’t want to share out of date or, worse, factually incorrect information at this time.

Last month Econsultancy also put together a list of dos and don’ts for this time. It noted that many organisations seemed to use the Coronavirus outbreak as an opportunity to get in touch with everyone in their database, and not just those who had recently done business with them.

Using this crisis as a re-engagement opportunity is a big no-no, according to the news provider. It noted that taking this approach “at best will result in consumers feeling unsettled by your contacting them out of the blue - at worst they may be turned off your brand completely and will probably tell their friends about the experience as well”.

However, Econsultancy stressed that it’s important for businesses to communicate with their existing customers and clients and to provide them with specific information about how the services they provide are affected and what they’re doing to keep things running as smoothly as possible.

It also advised sending any important information out in “easy-to-scan formatting” to make it as quick and simple as possible for people to find the information that’s relevant to them.