When customers trust you enough to keep a project moving during the coronavirus pandemic, you want to assure them you’re doing everything you can to keep them safe. Though it’s not difficult, keeping customers safe requires changing how you normally do things. Here are a few ways to keep business somewhat normal during these uncertain times.
Use Video Conferencing Tools to Meet with Customers
From initial contact to signing contracts, assure your customer there’s no need to sit at their dining room table for meetings and that you’re willing and able to use video conferencing tools to meet with them. Platforms like Zoom are great for sales presentations because most have a screen share option that makes sharing visual renderings a breeze.
If visuals aren’t needed, offer to use Apple’s FaceTime or Facebook’s video chat feature so your customers don’t need to download something new to their phone.
Explain that you can email documents for them to look at, and that contracts can be signed digitally. If they’re having trouble choosing materials or colors without seeing samples in a showroom, suggest they use a home visualizer tool, like CertainTeed ColorView®.
Create a Coronavirus-Safe Job Site
If your work takes you into an occupied dwelling, you can still keep your customers safe. Include safe distancing guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and job site-specific guidelines from the Association of General Contractors into your team’s protocol:
- Require all team members to wear eye protection, gloves, and face masks when onsite.
- Excuse team members with coronavirus symptoms, or those living with someone COVID-19 positive, from their duties until the situation changes.
- Prohibit ride-sharing to the job, and allow only one employee per company vehicle.
- To facilitate social distancing, limit the number of employees on the job or in any one room at any given time. Whenever possible, don’t have more than one crew on the job at a time.
- Drape off the work area, even if dust isn’t an issue, to prevent the spread of germs. Include another entrance from outside, separate from any entrance the family uses.
- Provide hand sanitizer for your employees and set up a handwashing station – with soap, water, and disposable towels – outside of the home. Empty the trash daily.
- Routinely sanitize surfaces like doorknobs and countertops, as well as frequently used tools.
- Provide a shoe sanitation tub with a bleach solution for workers to use when entering or leaving the job site. Be sure to follow the proper procedures when doing so, as to not only kill germs, but to also avoid making a mess.
Communicate with Subcontractors
If your job involves subcontractors, it’s important that everyone is on the same page when it comes to keeping customers safe. Go over your COVID-19 safety protocol with them to make sure their team is following the same guidelines. To promote social distancing, stagger your subcontracting teams so that no more than one team is onsite at any given time.
Letting existing and prospective customers know that you are taking safety seriously during the COVID-19 crisis is critical to the reputation of your business. Show that you understand their concerns, whether it be by posting your safety practices on your website and social media channels, or through an email campaign. Include photos of jobs you’re working on with these practices in place. What they see may encourage them to go ahead with their home remodeling plans too.
