With stay-at-home orders remaining in place in many cities around the world, the last few weeks have flown by very quickly, but have also felt like an eternity in many respects. As Client Success leader across all of Europe, my team and I are tasked with being trusted advocates of our clients and ensuring their day-to-day success. The global pandemic has certainly made our role ever-more critical and dynamic as we navigate a different kind of “digital-first” world that none of us ever predicted.
At Selligent, we implemented a work-from-home policy across all offices in March to ensure everyone’s health and safety. We are lucky to have a strong technology infrastructure in place to support our more than 700 brands worldwide while working remotely. While we are still in the thrust of a very challenging time, our team remains optimistic that we will get through this together in short order.
Here are three key things to keep in mind to support business continuity through this crisis:
What this crisis has taught us is the heightened need to be flexible and be able to quickly adjust strategies based on an ever-changing environment. With clients operating in different industries, we are seeing varying impacts of the pandemic to businesses globally. As such, continuing engagement to understand specific needs and challenges is crucial in order to figure out how to best support them. One thing is consistent: there is a need to digitally communicate with customers in a timely and proactive manner. To ensure that their communications are on point, we armed clients with best practices, templates and tool sets to make their work more efficient, and in some cases, our team helped with campaign implementation for those with team members who were impacted by COVID-19.
Importantly, we pivoted physical classroom trainings and Masterclasses to a virtual format within three weeks, supporting local languages across Europe to ensure that there is no disruption in learning.
We are only as good as the people we work with. I am proud to manage and work with colleagues who are smart, agile and incredibly resilient. The investment we make in our own people and talent is probably even more important than any process or technologies we put in place. Balancing work with families and children at home is not easy – but with the right talent, it can be successfully done. Additionally, having a robust, web-based technology infrastructure in place made the transition to remote work very seamless, and allowed our teams to be effective and efficient from day one.
One positive aspect to come out of the coronavirus crisis is the greater awareness that we are all in this together – and being human allows us to be both vulnerable and empathetic. While continuing to service clients in this difficult time is at the heart of what we do as a Client Success team, none of that is possible if we are unable to perform our duties. As such, we encourage teams to take care of themselves – to take breaks throughout the day, participate in wellness activities at home, schedule virtual check-ins and ensure ongoing human dialogue. Most importantly, take the time off even if it only means going off the grid at home to spend time with family. It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day struggles of the crisis and just keep working to stay busy and distracted. Regardless of physical distancing, remaining engaged both on a professional and personal level, is crucial to both our health and success.
We remain committed to supporting our clients and partners around the world in these challenging times. Here’s a short message from our global team.
© 2023 Marigold Engage
Marigold: where relationships take root.
