Communicating with Customers
Navigating Covid-19 (part II)
06.02.2020
As practically every business struggles through Coronavirus, Harvard Business came up with a neat framework called “HEART”. You can use it to get ideas for how to communicate with your customers to keep them coming back.
The HEART checklist
- Humanize your company: customers have shown amazing support to local restaurants so far. To keep them loyal, it can help to remind them that you are staffed by real people. It can be as simple as including your name— or employee names— on menus, flyers, or social media.
- Educate about change: use any channel you have to let customers know that your menu is changing and why. If customers know that you are limiting options because it lets you stay in business during this crisis, they are far more likely to accept it (and support you).
- Assure stability: this is about promising customers that the quality and taste of your food will always be excellent. It links in nicely with explaining your new, smaller menu e.g. “We want to make sure that every bowl is excellent.”
- Revolutionize offerings: restaurants have already adapted, offering more delivery services, takeout cocktails, that kind of thing. Now you’re adapting again to move into the next stage, let customers know how you’re changing things up again. Below, we’ll introduce how you can spread the word wider than with fliers and on chalkboards — with our 1bowl campaign.
- Tackle the future: letting know that you’re thinking ahead and you’ve got it covered. You could tell people when you will expand the menu again. Or tell customers that you have some amazing new dishes in mind for when this is all over, that you’re optimistic about the future.
We're in this together
Our priority at Choco is always to support restaurants, to offer help and guidance through this crisis. We will be putting on virtual panels so restaurants and suppliers can share methods, connect to support each other, and make sure we keep our gastronomy community strong.