COVID-19 Update to Customers
A Letter from Hari Shetty, Founder and CEO, Jifflenow
Dear Valued Customer,
I sincerely hope and wish you and your family are well. On behalf of all of us at Jifflenow, I want to extend our concern and compassion to those of you whose health and well-being has been affected by this Coronavirus outbreak.
At Jifflenow, all of us are trying to stay healthy under the circumstances and we felt it is very important to reassure you that we are deeply committed to supporting your business during these challenging times. We will also offer you alternatives to help you mitigate the cancelation or postponement of events.
Hari Shetty
Founder and CEO Jifflenow
How are we continuing to support our customers?
The disruption caused by Coronavirus to life and businesses is unprecedented and can possibly last for months. Meanwhile, we know that our customers need ongoing support and flexibility due to sudden changes to plans and programs. Even though we implemented a “work from home” policy for all Jifflenow employees in compliance with government mandates, I assure you that it will not impact our ability to provide consistent and world-class support expected of us.
How are we helping our customers when an event is canceled?
We know that preparing for events and scheduling customer meetings requires months of planning, hard work, and precise execution. Customers had been setting up live events using the Jifflenow platform and also scheduled a number of in-person meetings at upcoming events. But when any of these events are canceled or postponed, or our customers decide not to participate, it has a great impact on the sales pipeline and growth. We are well aware that organizations are very concerned about the lost opportunity to engage customers at events.
In response to COVID-19, Jifflenow announced the launch of the “Virtual Meetings” capability in its platform. Here is a link to the press release. Instead of simply canceling events entirely, customers are converting in-person meetings to virtual. We are already seeing great interest and momentum with customers implementing this new functionality to mitigate the business impact. To date, 15 customers have already implemented this capability for a number of canceled conferences and 3 more have introduced it for NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) in early April.
This conversion to virtual meetings is executed with a simple “click” in the platform and all the information associated with every meeting is also made available. The agenda and the list of participants remain the same but the meeting is virtual instead of in-person. To make it easier, Jifflenow is also integrated with Zoom and Webex conferencing software so meeting requesters can add a link from within Jifflenow. Integration with other conferencing software such as BlueJeans and Microsoft Teams is planned for release in the next couple of weeks. Here are the links to the recent webinar and the webpage that explain this Virtual Meetings capability.
What do we recommend for your upcoming events in the summer and fall of this year?
For all future upcoming events in summer and fall, where the cancelation or postponement is unknown, we recommend you to continue the process of setting up the live events and notify requesters to schedule meetings as usual. These can also be set up as “hybrid events”. Such hybrid events support both in-person and virtual options simultaneously and the Jifflenow platform offers this today. Later if these events are canceled or your organization decides not to attend them physically, you can easily convert them to virtual meetings as described above. In this way, you have a head start and are able to have the meetings with customers and prospects and the time and effort invested are not lost.
How can you help your Organization with its events strategy?
It is unclear when this outbreak will end and live events will be back in place. A popular approach that many companies are considering is to launch a “Virtual-Meetings Event” as a campaign to drive business. A Virtual-Meetings Event, like its physical counterpart, takes place in a specific period of time. You can set up the event in Jifflenow as a Virtual-only event and involve executives, experts, and sales teams just like an in-person event. Multiple Virtual-Meetings Events can be set up and managed as campaigns that can be focused on different industries, regions or by topics to support the needs of your company. It allows your organization the ability to engage a large number of customers with one-to-one virtual meetings. As with in-person meetings, all the opportunity, and other meeting information is available on the platform for meeting managers, attendees, and requesters enabling you to easily manage, measure and report on the results.
I assure you that we will continue to keep a close eye on this fast-evolving situation, generate innovative solutions that drive results and will continue to provide the best service and support to help you manage your challenges. Together we will successfully face the uncertainty in the coming months.
As a valued member of the Jifflenow family, we appreciate the trust you place in us. Please call your Customer Success Manager who is fully prepared to help you navigate these tough times.
In closing, I want to reiterate that Live events and In-person meetings provide incredible value that cannot be replaced. I strongly believe that the event industry will bounce back on a big scale, stronger than ever, with the flexibility to drive both face-to-face and virtual meetings and deliver higher value to business growth.
Stay safe and many thanks,
Hari Shetty
Founder and CEO, Jifflenow