You can still be Social While Social Distancing

The sudden changes brought on by the recent pandemic have impacted businesses of all sizes, but the changes have been particularly difficult for smaller businesses that cater to regional or local clients. As a small business, you have relied on direct interactions with customers, where they would reach you and do business with you at a place of business, whether it be an office, a body shop, a restaurant, a fitness center, a hair salon or any other business.

These clients came to you to enjoy your cuisine, get their car fixed, get some fitness instruction, and prepare their taxes. In the new era of social distancing and contactless interactions, small businesses are struggling to enable their employees to work remotely while still getting work done, while at the same time figuring out how they can continue to deliver the goods and services their customers need while engaging with them remotely.

Your business is wherever you engage your customers

As many businesses are learning, it is possible to run your business remotely and not only survive this adverse economic climate but thrive in it. It is possible to have your employees work remotely 100% of their time. And it is possible to remotely engage with your customers and not only offer the same goods and services you always have but to innovate by both providing new products and services and how those products and services get delivered to customers that have come to expect doing so remotely and with limited contact.

Because work is no longer where you go, it's what you do. And your business is no longer where you operate out of, it's what you deliver to your customers.

Survive, adapt, innovate and thrive

There is every indication that the trend to work and interact remotely with customers is permanent, and businesses that embrace this trend will not only survive, but they will also thrive and grow to expand their businesses beyond the traditional boundaries they are accustomed to. This means taking some key steps as a business to ensure you remain open for business, including communicating proactively with your customers, implementing best practices for your remote employees, and constantly innovating your business model.

Communications, while always an important component of any business, has now become a cornerstone to operating your business from anywhere, and ensuring you have a reliable and feature-rich communications solution to virtualize your business identity, enable your employees to collaborate with each other and with your customers however and whenever they wish to. And from anywhere.

The latest chapter in our eBook series provides more detail on how your business can thrive operating and working remotely from anywhere.

To learn more about 8x8’s all-in-one communications platform and how to adapt to working virtually in the new normal, check out our new eBook, Open for Business: Enterprise-Grade Communications for Businesses of Any Size.