I feel like the pandemic has opened up two extremes for businesses: they’ve either done really well, or completely tanked.

Both extremes have something in common: that they’ve had very little control over which way things have gone.

This is definitely true for us, and while we definitely fall on the lucky side (so many people have been shut away at home working on their website or upgrading their hosting plan to start new projects that our sales are higher than they’d normally be for this time of year), it’s been a very different few months to how we anticipated things would go at the beginning of the year.

Easter onwards is normally a bit quieter for us, but the pandemic means we’ve come out of a busy season…into another busy season. While our original plan was to spend late spring and early summer tidying up some things, wrapping up our business year (which falls at the end of July), and hopefully working on some new projects, it’s just ended up as business as usual.

This is no bad thing, it’s just different. The longer we’re in business, the more I expect obstacles, because it’s just the nature of the game. As mentioned in my last post, there was a very weird dead zone of a week or two where we had hardly any support tickets…I think because people were in shock/sorting their new lives out. Naively, we assumed that it was the beginning of a quieter summer season…but once people had recovered from the sledge hammer blow of lives being turned upside down, everything was back to full throttle. And then some.

It’s amazing to be busy, and of course the best position to be in considering how a lot of people and businesses have fared, but it’s also difficult because we were in the middle of getting a new office and training new staff and all that had to be put on hold (and still is).

As with any obstacle, we adjusted what we were doing to fit the new situation. The key to this is 1) thinking through realistic options and 2) implementing them slowly, in small degrees. People need time to adjust, they don’t want to be hit with a whole bunch of changes or extra commitments or feel like you’re dramatizing or taking advantage of a situation.

Some of the things we did when coronavirus hit

Prioritised emotions & situations

Our first instinct was to ask how we could help (rather than assume), and to try to help customers feel as safe and supported as possible. This included opening up honest conversations in our Facebook group, encouraging them to contact us in our emails, and offering options for people who were anxious about money or who had already lost their job.

We recognised that online connections would be more important than ever. And as a lot of the Lyrical Host family would be putting on a brave face in their role of being the main support for their real life friends and family, it was important that we were there to support them, or provide some form of escape from real life as needed.

We also made a list of things that were strictly off the table, including some small launches and releases that people wouldn’t have the brain space to consider. We also toned down the work-themed posts we normally do as a lot of people couldn’t concentrate on their blog or business.

Made a coronavirus plan

The next thing we did was to make a plan for ourselves, as to what would happen if we came down with coronavirus. This included preparing an email to send out to notify customers abut reduced support availability, an email to cancel migration bookings, images and posts for social media, and text for a notification bar on our website. It also meant my fixed tasks, such as the monthly resources and stock photos, needed to be stockpiled and ready to go. Finally, we made a list of friends we could contact to fill more support hours.

At home, we also created separate stashes of supplies of things such as bottled water, long-life snacks, antibacterial wipes and gel, separate towels and so on, with the idea that if one of us got it sooner than the other, we could isolate so the other one could keep on going as long as possible. We also bought a thermometer, some disposable cat bowls, and stocked up on Ginge’s medication.

Happy things

While we were preparing the above, I also planned a bunch of stuff with the aim of lifting customers’ spirits. The idea was that we would need to do a bunch of different things over a fairly long period, so we staggered these out over a few months.

Some of the things we did included:

• A bundle of free digital resources (the “Boredom Bundle”) – we asked customers if they could donate something, and we had so many great submissions!
• A book giveaway.
• Creating an “under $20” page for customers to list products/services, and running some paid traffic to it.
• A virtual assistant hours giveaway (we bought hours from Lyrical Host customers who are VAs, and gave them away to bloggers).
• Donating to the international Covid-19 fund.

We also sponsored a contest for a customer who was worried sick about her business, and bought some other great bits and pieces from some of our other customers.

There are a few other things still on our list, but I don’t want to ruin any surprises so I won’t mention them just yet.

(Later I caught a news piece where someone from eBay was listing the things they were doing to help their customers…great minds and all that ;))

Navigating unexpected challenges in coronvirus times

One of the things they never include in pandemic movies is the totally unrelated things that still happen in society while the virus is active. Navigating a pandemic is challenging enough; adding a (much-needed) new civil rights movement, plus all the regularly scheduled things like Pride month, is incredibly difficult, especially when you want to give everything the full attention it deserves. It’s essential to get it right as a business, but it’s even more difficult to do that when you’re pouring from a depleted cup.

Another thing that happened was that a hosting company that’s very popular with our target market suddenly dramatically increased their prices out of nowhere. As much as this is a good thing for us, it meant a sudden flood of enquiries and migration bookings at an already overly busy time. I imagine that these will continue to trickle in over time as people come to the natural ends of their billing cycles and realise how much more their renewal will be (especially for what they get). My own opinion on this is that it’s the worst possible time for highly profitable businesses to put their prices up; so many people are struggling or will soon start to; I personally wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.

The other thing we weren’t anticipating this spring/summer is for people to be grumpy. The heightened stress at the beginning of pandemic, and the ongoing long term stress, means that naturally more patience is needed for us customer service types. Thankfully our customers are amazing, and it’s easy to be patient with people who are lovely normally but are just having a bad day or week. (Customers who are genuinely and persistently mean/rude/abusive from day one are gently encouraged to find a new home for their site – one of the joys of being your own boss and valuing quality over quantity!).

What next?

One of the big things in business is stepping out into the unknown – you can make plans based on educated guesses, but there will always be unexpected twists.

For now the plan isn’t to plan anything, beyond modelling some potential recession-based scenarios of what could happen over the next year. This is more for an interest in best/worst/expected outcomes rather than because we intend to make any huge decisions, and we won’t go into tons of calculations. All the same it will be interesting to see the different likely possibilities another year could bring!