AllBusiness.com

AllBusiness.com

The New Normal: Reopening Your Business Amidst the Coronavirus

Posted: 17 Jul 2020 07:42 AM PDT

As stay-at-home orders start to lift, shuttered businesses are gearing up to open their doors again. For many, it's been a long time coming. But as we get back to business, things are going to be a little different … OK, maybe a lot different.

So, how can we open up shop during the coronavirus pandemic?

6 tips for reopening your business

This is a new situation for everyone. Nobody has all the right answers, and there are a number of things businesses should consider as the economy reopens. Here are a few tips that could help you adjust to the new normal as you reopen your business.

1. Pay attention to state guidelines

Maybe you're up-to-date with federal guidelines relating to the coronavirus, but what's your state got to say about it?

In addition to individual state tax relief and unemployment measures, each state's reopening process may look a little different. Most states are repealing stay-at-home orders little by little, with different businesses opening at different stages.

State guidelines may vary when it comes to:

  • Reopening dates
  • Which businesses can reopen at what dates
  • Social distancing requirements
  • Maximum capacity per business
  • Face mask requirements
  • Temperature precautions
  • Sanitation and hygiene
  • Contactless payment systems

If you're not sure where to find your state's COVID-19 guidelines, don't panic. I know that everyone is watching the news 24/7, so my team put together State-by-state Coronavirus Guidelines. Our article has links to each state's COVID-19 resource center.

2. Keep COVID-19 legislation in mind

If your business was temporarily shut down during a stay-at-home order, you may have furloughed your employees. And if your employees were furloughed, you may not have paid attention to the coronavirus legislation relating to employee rights.

Well, if you didn't pay attention before, now you need to. The end of stay-at-home orders doesn't mean the end of the COVID-19 bills the government passed.

There are a number of actions meant to help small businesses, like employer tax credits and generous loan programs. But the one you really need to keep in mind as your employees come back to work is the temporary paid leave law under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA).

According to a recent SHRM survey, only 47% of small business owners said they were familiar with the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA).

Whether you regularly offer employees paid leave or not, the FFCRA states you must offer employees additional hours off for qualifying coronavirus-related situations. Under the FFCRA, employers with fewer than 500 employees (with some exceptions for very small businesses) must provide:

  • Paid sick leave: 10 days of paid sick leave at the employee's regular rate (max $511 per day) if they're subject to a quarantine or an isolation order due to COVID-19.
  • Two-thirds paid sick leave: 10 days of paid sick leave at two-thirds the employee's regular rate (max $200 per day) if they're caring for someone subject to a quarantine or an isolation order due to COVID-19.
  • Paid family leave: 10 weeks of paid family leave at two-thirds the employee's regular rate (max $200 per day) if they must care for a child whose school or childcare center has closed due to COVID-19.

There are a lot more nitty-gritty details related to coronavirus paid leave that you should familiarize yourself with. This is just a general overview to give you an idea of your responsibilities.

Keep in mind that the paid leave law is in effect until the end of the year. So even though you're back in business, you can't neglect your employees who may continue to deal with the virus and its effects.

Related Articles:

3. Clean like you've never cleaned before

If you thought your cleaning process was pretty good before the pandemic, you might still need to step it up when you get back to business. In short: clean like your life depended on it, because someone's just might.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a "Reopening Guidance for Cleaning and Disinfecting Public Spaces, Workplaces, Businesses, Schools, and Homes" web page and PDF.

According to the CDC, you should be using soap and water, followed by EPA-approved disinfectants (or alternatives), to routinely clean your business. You should consider asking employees to wear masks and putting out hand sanitizer dispensers to make customers a little more comfortable while shopping.

4. Offer what consumers want and need

You're probably well aware that consumer spending is down. But, there are a number of in-demand products that are flying off the shelves just as quickly as they're being added to them.

You might consider expanding your business's offerings to include products or services that consumers want and need to get through this trying time. For example, you could add masks or at-home DIY kits.

5. Get a little creative

As you get back at it, you may encounter some new obstacles you have to overcome. Your customers might be scared to go into your business. Your suppliers might be overwhelmed with orders. Maybe some of your products are unavailable due to supply limitations.

Whatever the situation is, you're bound to have some hurdles.

To overcome whatever is thrown your way during your business reopening, be willing to get creative. For example, you could diversify your supply chain. Or, you could add a delivery system to appease customers who aren't ready to go into businesses just yet.

Don't forget to use some of your most important assets to come up with ideas: your employees. Brainstorm creative workarounds with your team before you need to put them into action. Having a plan in place is oh-so-important when it comes to resiliency.

6. Remember there's a global pandemic

One of the most important things to remember as you reopen your business is we're still in the midst of a global pandemic. I know you're eager to get back at it. But if you've been able to operate remotely, you may consider staying remote a little while longer. And depending on your state, you may have to.

In short, take it slowly. My Canton, Ohio-based company was one of the first in the area (if not the first) to start working remotely. But that doesn't mean we're going to be one of the first going back to the office as the stay-at-home orders lift.

Whether you stay remote, rotate employees so half work remote and half are in the office, or put up protective glass and tape throughout your business, keep safety a priority.

Monitor the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for guidance on keeping your employees, your customers, and yourself safe.

RELATED: How to Protect Your Business From COVID-19 Scams

The post The New Normal: Reopening Your Business Amidst the Coronavirus appeared first on AllBusiness.com. Click for more information about Mike Kappel. Copyright 2020 by AllBusiness.com. All rights reserved. The content and images contained in this RSS feed may only be used through an RSS reader and may not be reproduced on another website without the express written permission of the owner of AllBusiness.com.

10 Simple Client Appreciation Tips to Keep Your Business Growing

Posted: 17 Jul 2020 07:33 AM PDT

Client appreciation improves your client relationships and facilitates retention—and it doesn't cost much to execute.

When customers feel appreciated, they're much more likely to stick around, and they're more likely to recommend you to a friend or colleague. If you apply a customer appreciation strategy consistently, you can greatly improve both client retention and acquisition, and sustain business growth indefinitely.

Of course, client appreciation seems like a very simple concept, but to execute it effectively you'll need to consider your strategy carefully.

Client appreciation tips

These tips and strategies will help you design and execute a consistent client appreciation strategy:

1. Remember the Pareto principle. The Pareto principle is an informal rule that says you get about 80% of your results from about 20% of your efforts. For our purposes, we can estimate that 80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your customers.

Even if your business doesn't closely follow that formula, we can assume that some of your customers will be inherently more valuable than others. Accordingly, your most valuable customers should be the ones getting the most appreciation. Appreciate all your customers, even the small ones, but go above and beyond for the ones you're most eager to keep.

2. Be specific in your messaging. Whenever you're writing messages of appreciation or doing something special for a customer, be specific. A generic "thank you" card won't mean nearly as much as a paragraph-long message of gratitude for the experience of working together. A generic gift basket won't mean nearly as much as a gift basket that was hand-picked for a specific client. Know your audience and appeal to individuals specifically when possible.

3. Send handwritten notes or greeting cards. Email and other digital messages can be valuable, but few communications are as powerful as receiving physical mail. Consider printing greeting cards for your clients, and/or sending handwritten notes. The excitement of getting a piece of physical mail that isn't junk can instantly make someone feel appreciated—and handwriting always feels more personal than written text.

4. Apply both group and individual appreciation. Your customer appreciation strategy should include both individual and group level tactics. At the individual level, you can send gifts, write notes, and take clients out to dinner. At the group level, you can host customer appreciation weeks and special events where your customers call gather together.

5. Take advantage of holidays. Holidays are the perfect opportunity to show appreciation for all your clients. Around commonly celebrated holidays, like Christmas or the Fourth of July, consider sending a gift basket (or at least a card in the mail). The same is true for birthdays and celebrating personal accomplishments.

Other Articles From AllBusiness.com:

6. Offer discounts and freebies. For recurring customers, consider offering periodic discounts and freebies. Customers love to see surprise discounts applied to their orders, and they love getting free extras in the mail even more.

7. Make time for face-to-face communications. Even in this predominantly digital age, face-to-face communication remains one of the best ways to bond with other people. Instead of just sending a card or an email, try to have a meal together or a chat over coffee. Periodic in-person visits can make your client relationships much stronger.

8. Bend the rules (when appropriate). Your company likely has some firm rules in place about client interactions, procedures, and other business interactions. Be willing to bend, or even break those rules for your best clients. For example, if you typically offer one round of client edits, consider offering two or three—show your appreciation by going out of your way to make them satisfied.

9. Include small surprises. Surprise can make any positive gesture seem even better—and your clients will be more likely to share surprises with other people they know. Go out of your way to plan and execute small, positive surprises for your customers, like delivering projects earlier than anticipated or sending a surprise gift.

10. Learn from your past efforts. Pay attention to how your clients respond to different gestures. They may be relatively indifferent to one mode of appreciation, but particularly receptive to another. Learn from the past and update your customer appreciation approach for the future.

Consistency vs. novelty

Showing customer appreciation is a strategy you should employ consistently; only if you're persistent with your customer appreciation will you begin to reap the results. However, repeating exact processes can also get stale. If you always send the same greeting card after completing a project, it's going to mean less and less. Accordingly, you should find a balance between consistency and novelty. Always show your customers appreciation, but try to show it to them in new and different ways whenever possible.

RELATED: Customer Retention: 6 Techniques to Cultivate and Build a Stronger Customer Base

The post 10 Simple Client Appreciation Tips to Keep Your Business Growing appeared first on AllBusiness.com. Click for more information about Larry Alton. Copyright 2020 by AllBusiness.com. All rights reserved. The content and images contained in this RSS feed may only be used through an RSS reader and may not be reproduced on another website without the express written permission of the owner of AllBusiness.com.

Working From Home: How to Optimize Your Wi-Fi and Improve Your Connection

Posted: 17 Jul 2020 07:27 AM PDT

The coronavirus has impacted businesses large and small. While stay-at-home policies are being lifted in some U.S. states, many companies have decided to continue to operate remotely. When safer-at-home policies were first introduced due to COVID-19, many people quickly set up work-at-home office spaces. But now that it seems many of us will be working at home longer than we thought, we're finding our workspaces less than ideal.

If small businesses are going to stay virtual—at least for a while—you need to figure out what you and your employees need to function efficiently at home.

To get some answers, I talked to Doug Cheung, product manager of wireless networking and NAS, from NETGEAR Business.

Rieva Lesonsky: What equipment do small business owners and employees need to be able to work at home and still be productive?

Doug Cheung: An unprecedented number of employees are experiencing new challenges presented from the ubiquitous work-at-home environment. With this in mind, perhaps more important than any other technological element is a strong, reliable and, if needed, robust Wi-Fi connection.

For larger or multi-level homes that experience Wi-Fi dead zones, a recommended solution is using a mesh Wi-Fi system to blanket a home with better Wi-Fi coverage. Mesh Wi-Fi systems help evenly distribute Wi-Fi throughout the home to all connected devices via a router and satellite(s).

Mesh Wi-Fi also helps you unchain from your desk, giving you the ability to roam around the house and pick and choose the location of your workstation. For small business owners who need a personal Wi-Fi connection strictly for a work laptop, a mobile router is a great option. Offering broadband and elevated speeds, mobile routers and hot spots offer access to the fastest speeds available on the mobile network in your area. Because of their flexibility, small business owners and employees can easily take [a mobile router] on the go and work remotely at a location outside the home, like at a park or café (once they reopen).

Lesonsky: Are there minimum standards for the equipment?

Cheung: If you want to truly modernize your work-from-home setup, make sure any purchased router can support Wi-Fi 6 for a minimum standard connection. The latest Wi-Fi standard provides faster Wi-Fi with more capacity for the smart home or business and all connected devices. With this increased capacity, anyone working from home can get faster speeds and have the availability to stream to their devices without interruptions—this is especially important for those seeing an increase in video conferencing.

Even though modern Wi-Fi 6 and mesh Wi-Fi are extremely fast and reliable, remember that a hard-wired connection is still a great way to get a good connection and can be very useful in our current environment. You can also help improve your Wi-Fi situation by removing certain devices from Wi-Fi to clear the airwaves for the devices that absolutely need it for business purposes, such as tablets and laptops.

Lesonsky: In many households you might have parents and students all working off the same router at one time. Do you need a stronger router for times like these?

Cheung: Yes, without a doubt. Wi-Fi environments are becoming more complex with a growing number of devices connected to home networks. At the very least, make you're your network is running a Wi-Fi 5 (AC) or Wi-Fi 6 (AX) router. With a Wi-Fi 6 router, overloading your Wi-Fi with multiple devices is, more often than not, uninterrupted.

Lesonsky: Does placement of the router matter?

Cheung: More than you might think, actually. If you find you don't have a stable signal in certain areas of your home as the use of your router grows, it's time to adjust and move the device, as it might not be in the best place to reach every corner of your home.

Ultimately, you should ensure the router is placed in or near the center of the most important area of the home. Wherever you want and need the fastest speeds, aim for the center of that location.

It's also important to remember the devices that live in a specific room. While Wi-Fi in the garage might not be necessary for some business owners, if a family or office setup has a smart bridge for the garage door, a stable connection is imperative.

Furthermore, a clear line of sight between the access point and the wireless device (laptop, phone, tablet) is ideal. Factors such as number of walls, and wall thickness will affect signal strength.

Other Articles From AllBusiness.com:

Lesonsky: Can you boost your signal?

Cheung: Yes, and this is especially important given the current work-from-home situation. The best way to boost your signal is to invest in Wi-Fi range extenders. These extenders, also aptly called Wi-Fi boosters, are a simple and economical way to ensure your connectivity range mirrors its needs—and can even bring dead zones to life. For those unfamiliar with this technology, it's best to place the extender halfway between a router and the dead zone. Your signal strength and bandwidth will be immediately boosted and directed to the Wi-Fi trouble spot.

In terms of how it actually works, Wi-Fi range extenders are meant to boost the existing Wi-Fi in your home by receiving the wireless signals from your router and repeating them with powerful amplifiers and antennas, which can extend coverage by up to twice the range. Look for devices that are universally compatible, so they can boost the Wi-Fi of any standard router from any brand. With these helpful additions to your Wi-Fi setup, you’ll be able to keep your smartphones, game consoles, TVs, tablets and computers online and connected.

Lesonsky: What about security? How do you make sure your work in your home stays secure?

Cheung: Using a VPN as a first step will help keep data safer in your work from home setting. A VPN is a special encrypted link between computers, specifically yours and your employees', that is a frontline defense when in a work from home situation.

For additional security when working from home, look for routers that have built-in cybersecurity, which ensures all the devices connected to Wi-Fi—laptops, tablets, smart speakers, thermostats, lights, locks, appliances, etc.—are all protected.

As the number of connected devices continues to grow in our homes, the potential number of vulnerabilities grow as well, especially for business owners.

RELATED: Working From Home? 9 Tips to Staying Productive and Sane During These Difficult Times

The post Working From Home: How to Optimize Your Wi-Fi and Improve Your Connection appeared first on AllBusiness.com. Click for more information about Rieva Lesonsky. Copyright 2020 by AllBusiness.com. All rights reserved. The content and images contained in this RSS feed may only be used through an RSS reader and may not be reproduced on another website without the express written permission of the owner of AllBusiness.com.
Posted by: at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)