Doing things differently post COVID-19: Scottish Pacific

How is your business going to do things differently post COVID-19?

For a business such as Scottish Pacific, with offices in all Australia’s major cities as well as in New Zealand, the key challenge has been staying connected to our staff and customers during this time.

Communication techniques and technology we’ve adapted during COVID-19 has led to innovation that we are likely to draw on after the crisis subsides.

During the COVID-19 crisis ScotPac, Australasia’s largest non-bank funder of SMEs, has used technology to engage our clients and introducers, as well as our internal teams.

For instance, we’ve held informative webinars, partnering with other experts to provide business owners with a clear outline of the key steps they should be taking to get through this crisis.

Internally, we’ve held live online ‘town halls’ and Q&As with our leadership team to share how the business and our clients are doing and to allow them to tell us what’s on their minds.

We’ve organised other online events to inform and reassure clients, introducers and our employees – the groups who are most important to us.

We’ve found it effective to have shorter, more frequent catch ups across the business, instead of longer, scheduled discussions that were traditionally held.

We’ve held twice daily video catch-ups (at the start and end of each working day) with our team members.

It’s interesting that, with some contacts across offices in different states or countries, because everyone is working remote, in many cases we are all having more face time, via Zoom or Team meetings. In some ways this has built a greater sense of community.

We’ve also had success with virtual social events, such as team drinks. Having to work harder to keep teams integrated will make many workplaces appreciate their employees even more so than before COVID-19.

Moving forward, we see video interactions playing an important role to support ScotPac’s client visitation program. This will be especially important for our regional clients, where it can be more challenging to visit at short notice.

Video calls have shown us another way to build a closer relationship with people – a way that is much more personal than a phone call.

This will add another dimension to building closer relationships with our customers. The Microsoft Teams technology has been excellent, and easy for external parties to connect with us.

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