As an SEO agency, our business consists largely of sitting directly across from our clients and explaining to them how we will put them in better positions on the Internet. We then partly access their sites during the operative work. Our people also like to sit in their office building or company to exchange ideas with the experts. They provide important input for content marketing. But with Corona all that has changed. We show how it works now.
Customer proximity despite distance
Depending on the current danger and legal situation, we always had a live meeting scheduled, at least at the beginning. Without one it was difficult to establish a good connection. Currently we avoid such dates. The good thing is: the customers tolerate it. Simply for the reason that it is not allowed otherwise. So you could say that things have changed in a flash. In the past, people would have looked at us slantwise if we had said: “We’re not coming over. Nowadays it’s standard practice and everyone does it that way, so it doesn’t matter at all.
It’s certainly a bit strange not to shake hands anymore and in a video conference it’s sometimes a bit more difficult to explain things. You notice that gestures and facial expressions are somehow part of the language.
After the first meeting has taken place and the goals have been set, we make sure that our people get an overview of who is responsible for what at the customer’s end. Everyone gets the list of contact persons. This way we ensure that our employees don’t always have to go through the head office to find out who is doing what. We can establish direct contact. This usually makes things go faster.
Of course there are now many conferences. On the phone and on the screen. For this, we have looked for solutions that allow for uncomplicated work. For example, we use Notes2conf for HCL Lotus Notes. Watch the video here:
This way we make sure that all tools like TeamViewer, Zoom or GoToMeeting etc. are integrated into Notes via a gateway. This is advantageous because it is then relatively unimportant to us which conference provider our customers use. We can adapt flexibly to this. Appointments for such meetings are simply created in the Notes calendar in the client. Necessary access data is then already included. So no additional maintenance is necessary.
Over time, we always find systematics where we shorten and standardize processes. All in all, we have adapted well to the new situation. We can only hope that the economy does not collapse in winter.