As I write this the world is starting to slowly emerge from lockdown, and as we do I can see we are witnessing and evolutionary change. There are so many things we’ve had to adapt to during the last few months that we never really believed would be necessary. For regular people like us, total lockdown in most countries of the world was something only reserved for sci-fi movies in 2019, and judging by the last few weeks it seems that most nations governments never really expected it either!
"So as we emerge into the new world of post lockdown,
one where we are still fighting the virus that threatened to set us back decades,
what has changed?"
In my line of work we “embrace the beauty of technology” (one of our core values) to help business owners become successful online. We’ve been doing this long before anyone had heard of Covid-19, but since the lockdown started our services have become a really big deal! In most cases the only opportunity businesses had to trade was to trade online, so our website and apps have gone from something people would get around to setting up “someday”, to something they had to have, and quickly!
Our team at Blam, far from being furloughed, has had to scale up and expand due to the increased demand. A.I Websites, mobile ordering apps, Google G-Suite with screen share, Zoom integration with websites and of course all of the marketing support that goes with these tools have been in high demand.
With retail, hairdressers, pubs, bars and restaurants now planning their social distancing strategy, we’re seeing another wave of business come our way. Apps that take bookings, manage orders and deal with customers questions are now flooding in to us to help maximise our clients profits within the restrictions that now apply for enclosed areas of these spaces.
Here’s my prediction…
We’re being accelerated into a way of doing business that we would have arrived at anyway, regardless of the pandemic. I’ve singled out just three industries that I believe won’t look back once they embrace the beauty of technology. There are loads more of course but we’ll start here.
Barbers
Booking your slot at the barbers using an app so you don’t have to sit and wait just makes more sense. But many barbers didn’t embrace this route prior to lockdown as, if they were busy, the incentive wasn’t there for them, or their customers, to take the initiative. Now they are being forced to use a solution like this, both customers and business owners will embrace the tech and realise it’s so much better, social distancing or not.
Pubs and bars
Ordering your round of drinks from the table using a smartphone app is a much more efficient way of doing things. No more being overlooked by the server at the bar or leaving your friends behind for ages whilst you wait for your turn. From the owners perspective, collating orders as they come in from the app is much more effective and efficient and they will be able to serve more people quicker and easier.
Gyms
Booking classes and managing personal training sessions is another obvious win for mobile app features. Managing the flow of people in and out of the gym can be easily managed through these basic functions as well as being able to notify and communicate with customers quickly and efficiently.
So businesses are starting to embrace the idea that far from being a hassle, using the tech to make more money and keep their customers loyal is a huge advantage in the post lockdown world and beyond. As customers ourselves, we will see that this new way of doing things is more convenient and saves us time, something we all need more of.
Here at Blam we originally defined our core value “Embrace the beauty of technology” over five years ago when we wrote our heart felt beliefs in the form of these values. We use this core value and the other six to guide our business, remind us what we believe in and help us make decisions. This core value has NEVER been more relevant than right now as we help small businesses around the globe find a way of trading and prospering by embracing this beautiful technology.
To find out what are other core values are take a look at them
here.
