How business growth can be enhanced during Covid-19?

2020 has been full of surprises starting from forest fires of Amazon to riots in America regarding racism, and you all know about the deadly Corona virus pandemic that is not ready to stop, all these events are having a huge impact on the world economy. India is one of the major affected places, businesses are on downfall just when India was trying to focus on its own business following the Make in India movement, Government is trying its best to control the pandemic situation and trying to utilize this situation using Atmanirbhar Bharat. Until now there are endless industries in India which depends on exports from other countries especially China and due to COVID-19 all the imports are blocked and industries are working with the existing stock available and this is what Atmanirbhar moment also target that we should stop depending on others and start taking initiatives and be self-dependent. World bank has predicted that India’s economy will contract by 3.2% in the year 2020 and every industry is facing a crisis situation and looking for alternatives to cope up with this decline.

There has been negative growth in businesses all over India, where on one side some of the industries like shipping, aviation, construction, and auto sector have been severely affected, whereas some industries like entertainment, local pharma, diagnostics, consumer goods and durables, AroChem and fertilizers have positive growths. As you can see in the current scenario around India, the travel business is at minimum whereas demand for medical facilities due to corona has increased. Many companies are closing or at a verge of going bankrupt, many small incidents are creating fear in people’s mind, like recent news about a pizza delivery boy in Delhi was diagnosed with Corona which created a haphazard situation which in turn broke people’s trust in food delivery industries like Swiggy and Zomato, which in turn leads to these industries cutting their costs by firing employees. The same goes for OLA which recently let go of 1400 employees in India. Alternatively, there have been some industries like Asian Paints that are doing many things to support their workers and adapt to the situation. Currently, there are many guidelines which are needed to be followed by industries for combating Corona, in which people are working from home, maintaining social distance, and are facing challenges like electricity, connectivity, and communication issues which have reduced the efficiency and quality of work. Companies have reduced their employee capabilities and different shift systems have been followed. One of the major issues companies are facing is customer retention and attracting new customers. Ongoing marketing strategies are not able to produce the desired output and companies are switching to consultancies for their business growth.

There is one positive change that was made possible due to Corona, where human beings got time with their loved ones and are trying to improve their relationships which were missing due to the busy and hectic lifestyle. This is the right time when people can invest in themselves and their business growth by applying innovative strategies and taking the help of consultancies to come up with better business plans. Some of the good ways of improving business growth are by increasing customer engagement by providing a better user experience. User experience can be enhanced by keeping the below-mentioned points in mind:

• Keep your design simple and understandable
• Keep user needs in mind while designing and make it an interactive and dynamic interface (responsive)
• Taking a consultative approach
• Optimizing call to action buttons using AB testing (Keep the navigation easy)
• Monitoring user engagement through analytic tools and implementing key performance metrics
• Optimizing language capabilities
• Using empathy to empower the users
• Better user experience will provide you better user engagement and retention which will lead to business growth.

Another way to improve business growth is by improving customer relationship, your design and services attract customers but customer relationship plays a very big role in customer retention and it can be improved by considering the following points:

• Understand the pain points of users and provide timely resolutions
• Provide extra services to valuable customers
• Give option for different promotions
• Conduct sentimental analytics and provide personalization for building a better relationship
• Building trust by increasing your transparency
• Predict the trends and provide the right content at the right time

Nowadays, there has been a shift from traditional marketing strategies to business consultancies for business growth. Management consulting is the practice of helping organizations to improve their performance across all areas of business which consists of HR and marketing, to IT and finance. Management consultants’ guides for the identification of problems, which serve as the basis of recommending more efficient ways of performing work tasks. Organizations may draw upon the services of management consultants for several reasons:

• Change management assistance
• Analyzing, generating insights and recommending solutions
• Implementation of needed technological changes
• Development of optimum strategies
• The overall growth of the business

“The real test is not whether you avoid this failure because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.” — Barack Obama

2020 is a test at every curve, every day put us into new challenges but it’s up to us, how we tackle such situations will ultimately predict whether our business will be on a rising slope or a downfall. So, now it’s the right time to face these challenges rather than blaming them, turn your challenges into opportunities, think, and innovate for the betterment for all.

Neelima Saini

Done as an intern for Edify Accelerators @https://www.linkedin.com/in/edify-accelerators-498361194/