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With more and more people staying at home, or cautiously consuming many businesses have had to shift how they interact with consumers. Creative solutions from around the globe have been circulating on how some savvy businesses are keeping consumers from nail technicians doing nails through the letterboxes in the UK to Boober Eats in NY where strippers deliver your food topless.

Now we aren’t, necessarily, suggesting that you need to go to such extremes, but it might be time to consider some new tools for business growth. Digital adoption is a huge barrier for businesses and at no time did that become more apparent than with Covid-19. Especially when it comes to reaching businesses’ consumers over 50.

Consumers over 50 aren’t going away, but rather gaining numbers. According to the US Census Bureau, Americans over 50 are expected to reach almost 25% of the population in the next couple of decades and 1 in 5 will be over 65 by 2030. The greying generation is no longer a generation that companies can ignore without an economic impact.

Therefore, we have some tips and suggestions to ensure that your consumers know that you are focused on them for the long-term.

Customer education is the most viable long-term strategy

Stop hoping your customers learn from a Youtube video that your intern made. Provide them with the tools and resources to learn how to use, not just once, but continually, your products and services through your apps, websites, and technological pathways. This will help to reduce their stress and frustrating waiting times on ‘helplines,’ and ensure customer satisfaction. Furthermore, it will empower your consumer, and everyone loves to feel empowered!

Healthcare.com did just that by providing its demographic with a guided online experience, product comparisons, and personalized recommendations. None of that one example then the implied take your situation and try to adjust it on your own.

Healthcare.com isn’t trying to make it harder for their consumers. They want to make it easier. How can they effectively do that?

By adding tools to teach the consumers how to do it for themselves. They are following the age-old wisdom “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Teach your consumers to feed themselves, and you will have their loyalty for a lifetime.

Offer support material to show you care about the consumer

It is important that your consumer base and target market know that they are still important to you. Make sure they see you are doing something to reassure them. Ideally, this is more than one of the hundreds of emails saying “be careful about Covid-19.” Instead, offer them something they can use.

AARP Connections recognized that their demographic of senior citizens might have some issues with isolation and stay-at-home measures. So they partnered with GetSetUp whose ‘reskilled’ retired educators, Guides, are dedicated to helping the 50+ demographic learn via live interactive fun sessions on how to use technology. AARP assured that its seniors knew of GetSetup’s 30 new tools for seniors in “Education” and “Technology to Stay Connected” to help and support them. This supported 2000+ individuals in just the first 2 weeks since the launch of the program with learning opportunities around Telemedicine, grocery delivery, installing Zoom, applying for Social Security and Medicare online.

Offer training to show you care about your employees

Most employees were not prepared to be working from home, especially not long-term. Many may not have the setup or technical support to do it effectively. The Learning Accelerator realized that their teachers would need training quickly on online classroom tools. Thus, they established educator-to-educator training on the tools necessary to plan, connect, and provide instruction to support students with online learning.

GetSetUp prepared a 3-day rapid response Academy to reskilled 40 retired educators to become experts in the tools essential for public school teachers who needed to teach remotely during the corona crisis. Then over the course of a week, they provided over 500+ hours of live onboarding and training to educators so they felt self-sufficient and confident in the tools and technology they needed to start teaching students remotely. Since these classes were small groups or one-on-one it particularly helped those who faced issues with digital adoption, and the class was able to base around the users’ abilities and needs.

Assure Your Consumer Can Access You

Has your company recently started to provide online services or services via a new app since coronavirus? Or maybe you have a new target market that wasn’t using technology previously to use your services?

Consider how you will help stand out from the crowd in your support to new consumers, so consumers see your service or product with new eyes. Make sure that they have easy access to your product or service so you aren’t losing money due to consumers’ inability to navigate your site or use your app. In the past, it might have worked to have helplines, a Youtube video, or written instructions. However, now people are online all the time. Screentime is overloaded!

So if you really want to ensure that your consumers are using your product and service you need to create engagement. Assure that consumers have live interactive help to understand your product or service. Don’t let them give up before they get started!

If you are interested in helping train your senior 50+ consumers or employees on essential tools of your business schedule a meeting with GetSetUp Co-Founder, Lawerence Kiosk, about how GetSetUp Guides can quickly and economically help ensure that you aren’t losing business, but connecting live with your target audience.