Post Pandemic Business Operations: What’s Changed Forever?
Even as life, for many of us, returns to relative normality, the aftershocks of the global Covid-19 pandemic continue to be felt within the professional sphere. In the space of a year, the way that we work was completely deconstructed and reassembled. As a result, certain expectations and assumptions have shifted – permanently.
For businesses dealing with a wide range of clients, how can these new needs be met? What tools can help our businesses evolve alongside the changes observed within professional services across a wide range of industries?
In this article, we’ll explore four key changes and suggest some ideas for meeting the challenges they represent within the new area of client-based business.
1. Remote-Friendly, Automated Efficiency
The move to remote working, necessitated by the pandemic, increased our need to communicate and operate through digital means. As a result, reliance on platforms and tools offering assistance in this area skyrocketed.
Adaptations and workarounds needed to be found internally and externally, as the way that we interacted with colleagues and clients alike altered overnight. Through the lens of client-based businesses in particular, this meant no more face-to-face “fact-finding” missions, as paperwork (in particular, with regard to the onboarding process) was filled in during in-person meetings.
As a result, it has been important to find ways to template and automate as many of these repeating processes as possible. This ability needed to come with a degree of flexibility – if we take the example of onboarding again, it’s essential to have the ability to easily customize and adapt templated workflows to allow for the varying needs of different clients.
MyDocSafe’s client onboarding software offers the ability to create and customize fast, efficient and highly functional flows that can accommodate data capture, authorisation, timestamping and much more besides.
2. A New Cadence Of Communication
The pandemic accelerated digital communication – and now the noise is deafening. Used heavily for both personal and professional use, many entered a “love/hate relationship” with tools such as Zoom and WhatsApp. Living and working under such unprecedented conditions meant operating in uncharted territory when it came to social convention – in fact, when it came to communication, at times it felt like all bets were off.
Although restrictions are relaxing, professionals working within a wide range of industries are still experiencing “notification fatigue” as peer-to-peer channels such as Slack and Whatsapp, coupled with the fact that people are often working from home, open up an “available all hours” culture.
As we come out of the pandemic, there’s a need to reestablish boundaries around client communication, in order to regain a little control and reset expectations which may have become unreasonable during the extraordinary circumstances that lockdown placed upon us all.
While it may be necessary to control and corral client communication into a more efficient and directed channel, it’s still important to give clients the ability to have direct access to help and answers. However, instant messaging sets an exhausting (and inefficient) precedent.
Client portals can be a helpful way to control the cadence of communication. Giving instant access to documentation, collecting data via surveys, running automated onboarding flows and more – the client portals offered by MyDocSafe are secure, brandable and incredibly flexible when it comes to setting up and efficient and effective way of keeping clients connected and informed, without losing hours of your day responding to ad hoc queries.
3. A New Way To Soft Sell
Face to face meetings were one of the first casualties of the pandemic, and even as things return to normal, a general realisation that a great deal of in-person contact time is unnecessary (or even unwanted) remains.
Of course, some undeniable benefits come with the reduced need to travel to meetings of this kind, but a big drop in time spent in person with clients has its drawbacks. One of the most significant here is the challenge that businesses may face when it comes to building rapport with clients – in particular when it comes to understanding the small subtleties that might be impacting the direction their business is heading in.
This does more than impact your ability to provide the most accurate and insightful service to your clients. You’ll also be at a disadvantage when it comes to spotting opportunities to sell new services or change your agreements.
If your business is feeling the impact of this reduced ability to “test the water” with clients, then once again, MyDocSafe’s client portals represent an opportunity to regain some lost ground. Increasing the frequency of well-structured, seamlessly integrated surveys and eforms to client flows can help you keep a digital “ear to the ground” – benefiting your clients as your insight increases and advice becomes more accurately honed – but also increasing your opportunity to introduce new offers, tools or services.
4. Easy Data Privacy Compliance
The pandemic saw a huge increase in the way that we communicate and coordinate with our clients (via the shift to digital platforms and a wide array of digital tools) coupled with the acceleration of data privacy (both in terms of legislation and expectation) has led to an increased focus on data protection and privacy.
When it comes to compliance with data privacy, the onus is increasingly shifting onto software to ensure that this is met. As a result, software providers are starting to put measures in place to make data privacy compliance a “forced function” – helping businesses to stay on the right side of the law.
MyDocSafe places huge importance upon data security (boasting ISO 27001:2013 certification) and, while use of MyDocSafe alone does not guarantee that you will comply with your obligations under GDPR, many of our features can help you in this regard.
The Future Of Client Communications In A Brave New World
When it comes to facilitating the optimal balance of client access and data security in the post-pandemic professional landscape, MyDocSafe offers a whole raft of features that can empower and enable your business.
The way we work has been altered, but the desires of our clients remain unchanged: clear lines of communication, efficient collaboration and a partner who takes time to understand their challenges and opportunities.
Interested in working for MyDocSafe? Explore Jooble for job opportunities.
