Top Takeaways on How to Help Customers During COVID-19: 5 Things We Learned from Lovell Porter

Lovell Porter takes pride in delivering quality service – even amidst a global pandemic. During his six years in the front lines of service, our Customer Care Team manager and his team have become used to dealing with challenging situations.

Here are the 5 things we learned from how Porter and his dynamite team are handling the curve balls of COVID-19:

1. Promote Collaboration

Before the crisis, Porter’s team was already comfortable working from home. Although their daily tasks haven’t changed, the biggest hurdle is the lack of casual collaboration. They miss those moments when somebody would “just throw out a question and six people ended up over there on a whiteboard trying to figure out.”

To make up for casual teamwork, they now use tools to promote remote collaboration and continue the benefits of a group problem-solving environment.

2. Put Yourself in Your Customers’ Shoes

With a pandemic going on, Porter and his team operate from a place of empathy toward the customer. When things get tough, they find inspiration in those customers who are still fighting keep their businesses going despite the crisis.

As a manager, Porter is pleased to recognize his team’s commitment to customer service. He is proud to mention that “one of the first questions that everybody was asking me was ‘OK, how can we still effectively help our customers?’” By thinking of how COVID-19 affects their customers, this team has demonstrated a superior level of care that clients appreciate.

3. Maintain Work-Life Balance

Porter admits that finding that happy medium between home and work life has been challenging. For him, “loving the work from home is one thing, but working from home with your entire family is something totally different.”

To stay focused, he uses different rooms and makes the most of the space at home. This allows him to effectively manage his team and continue to meet with them as often as he did before.

4. Laugh It Off

Laughter is a reminder that we’re all on the same boat and everyone is adapting to the new normal. When his family’s board game got competitive and interrupted Porter’s meeting with a co-worker, laughter let him know that his collaborator understood that there’s a real family behind Porter’s Zoom background. Life continues on the other side of the computer and that’s OK.

5. Remember That Your Work Is Important

While laughter is healthy, Porter and his team never forget that their work is important. “The people that we service in the work that we do is so far-reaching and so important we can’t let the outside things affect our daily,” he says. This is why when the coronavirus blues hit, keeping the importance of their work in mind helps Porter and his team get through the tough days.

While the world adapts to the new normal, remote collaboration is an opportunity to do meaningful professional work and spend more time with family and loved ones. Balance, creativity and technology allow us to work efficiently while staying safe.