Advice from Moneypenny on how business can thrive in a post COVID Economy

Joanna had a meteoric rise having been recruited as Moneypenny’s first sales person in 2005. Known for her commercial acumen and transformational leadership style, Joanna is passionate about developing people and creating a culture which breeds success and innovation. Having dealt personally with thousands of businesses who have moved to outsourced communications support, Joanna’s philosophy is ensuring businesses ‘stick to their knitting’ – that is do what they’re really good at and get experts in to help with the rest.

Joanna has overseen Moneypenny’s evolution into one of the UKs leading technology companies and is passionate about building practical solutions that can be applied to businesses of all sizes. She is a regular contributor and speaker on key topics, including digital transformation, workplace culture, leadership and international growth.

About Moneypenny

Moneypenny was founded in 2000 by Ed Reeves and his sister Rachel Clacher and employs 1,000 people across the UK and the US.   It provides Live Chat, Telephone Answering Service and Digital Switchboards, managing more than 15 million calls, chats, text messages, and emails for more than 13,000 clients annually.  As the COVID 19 pandemic; began to spread the company received a surge in enquiries about remote communications services as companies across multiple industry sectors tried to adjust to their staff having to work from home, or to their premises being closed with no-one to handle customer calls and Moneypenny stepped into the breech.  Since then the company has been helping companies to prepare for the post COVID economy and so Joanna is uniquely placed to comment on how companies can be ready to kick start their businesses and manage new ways of working.

Here are some examples of Joanna’s advice on how business can thrive in a post COVID Economy:

Creativity thrives on chaos – It’s very easy to maintain the status quo when running a business, but a crisis like COVID 19 can lead to change, as we’ve been forced to be creative, innovate, adapt and do things differently, while business leaders will have learnt a lot about their business and their customers which will prove to be useful knowledge for future business development.  While inevitably some businesses will fail, entrepreneurs will start new businesses and existing companies will identify new services to develop.

Use your data to make informed decisions – It’s more important than ever to analyse your business data pre and post COVID.  For example, at Moneypenny we’ve discovered that despite a boom in the use of social media to contact businesses, the telephone still remains the most important communication method for customers to connect with businesses, as 43% of businesses say phone calls were even more important during lockdown.

Respond to customers promptly – People are inherently impatient and as lockdown restrictions are eased, clients will go back to expecting quick responses to their enquiries and calls. As enquiry levels increase and the world adapts to the new normal it will be vital for businesses to have the resource in place to cope and to get ahead of the competition

Business Cuts, a necessary evil – No-one likes to make cuts in business, but these may be necessary to ensure business survival.  Those who enjoy gardening will know that pruning can stimulate new growth.

People value human interaction  – At Moneypenny we noticed phone call duration increased for our clients during lockdown. This is largely due to callers craving human interaction, however as restrictions ease while businesses might see call durations and volumes return to normal, the desire for meaningful human interaction will remain.   People will remember the business that made an effort to call them to inform on the status of their services under lockdown and are likely to repay them with brand loyalty

Invest in tech – we’ve seen a big increase in businesses using tech during lockdown, with use of tools like Zoom, Google meets and Microsoft teams booming and this is only going to continue, especially in the communications space.  The companies that embrace new tech, such as live chat bots and AI will reap the benefits.  Far from removing the human equation from business, our experience has been that tech has stimulated human dialogue, for example, use of Workplace by Facebook by our staff has led to a proliferation of online quizzes, celebrations and info sharing

Don’t be afraid to outsource – many businesses might be tempted to make savings by trying to do everything themselves, but it really does pay to outsource certain functions like communications as this can be handled by experts more easily and cost effectively than you think, leaving your staff free to focus on the things they are good at.