According to the September 2020 report by Yelp, there were 163,735 businesses that have closed shop, which was a 23 percent rise from July of the same year. Of these closed down businesses, 97,966 of them were permanent closures — a significant 60 percent of all closed businesses by that period.
If you own a business and you’re struggling to think of ways how you can run your affairs daily, there are some tricks that you should try. Here are five ways on how you can painlessly and efficiently run your business during a pandemic crisis:
1. Get creative.
Businesses should know how to adapt and get creative during a pandemic for them to survive and flourish. And quite a lot of industry did find ways to change their processes to answer the current needs of the consumer population. For example, instead of producing liquors, wineries and liquor makers turned to produce alcohol and hand sanitizers at the height of the pandemic since they are in great demand. There are other examples of business innovations during the pandemic but the main idea is to identify the market’s current needs and then figure out how to repurpose one’s facilities and resources to address those needs.
2. Comply with government work regulations.
The COVID-19 pandemic has a whole array of effects on how businesses conduct their day to day operations, especially when it comes to ensuring minimized transmission risks of the virus. Fortunately, there are tools such as the ServiceNow GRC module that business owners can use to comply with relevant governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) requirements and make their processes more efficient and resilient to various risks.
Among the pandemic-related work regulations that businesses have to observe are social distancing, the option for employees to work remotely, and the installation of alcohol dispensers and handwashing stations in strategic areas around workplaces such as the entry and exit points.
3. Focus on delivering top-notch customer service.
Whether it’s a pandemic situation or not, delivering excellent customer service should always be a top priority. Thus, you have to ensure that you have an efficient way of addressing customer concerns on the products or services that you offer, as well as ensuring that customers get the best value for their money. Remember that people would expect businesses to offer a higher level of customers during a pandemic when money is hard to come by as industries across the world get hardly hit. 
4. Shift your marketing strategy from traditional to digital.
During the current pandemic, a lot of companies shifted from traditional marketing channels like newspapers and magazines to digital means such as social media campaigns and YouTube promotions. As people are afraid to step out of their homes, digital marketing platforms such as social media sites become the most logical advertisement tools for businesses. It’s basically an adapt or close shop situation when a pandemic occurs.
5. Acquaint yourself with the virtual workplace setting.
One of the biggest trends that came out of this pandemic is just how many companies did a rapid shift from face to face work schedules to one that is almost entirely remotely. For non-techie business owners and managers, this can be a deal-breaker. However, don’t be disheartened since there are plenty of ways to acquaint yourselves with how the virtual workplace setting works.
There are YouTube videos and online tutorials that discuss how to use and navigate the user interfaces of Zoom, Google Classroom, Skype, Google Drive, and other online collaboration and communication tools. There will be a learning curve but you’ll surely get the hang of things if you’ll take time to study how to use these remote work tools.
Just think of these tricks and your business will have a higher chance of surviving the present and future pandemics that may affect the realm of commerce.
