The global coronavirus pandemic has a great impact in our economy and is affecting everyone in many ways. Many of us are advised to work from home to minimize the chances of transmission, while many businesses are attempting to manage their remote workforces, people are practicing social distancing, and deemed non-essential businesses are temporarily shutting down, and virtually everyone is wondering how long this will last and how it will impact our personal and professional lives.
We received many responses, and some were quite candid and eye-opening, and what we have done was to consolidate and share some of the general feedback and concerns received as below.
· “It has dramatically affected our sales and revenue and we don’t seem to be able to foresee how much longer one can hold on to our business.”
· “People are spending less and avoid unnecessary spending where possible. Being in the retail business, although we adopt digital platform, we are still experiencing a drastic drop in our sales!”
· “Very worrying as most of my customers has been cancelling or deferring our service. This has really affected our performance. Perhaps the only good news is that the crisis is affecting everyone, and we will all bounce back soon.”
· “Customers are delaying their repayment to us when contacted on phone since we have to stop on site collections, most gave excuses that they need more time to pay due to covid-19. Really do not know how long this excuse will stay!”
· “We are hearing more and more people falling into the trap of illegal lenders. Sincerely hope more people will say NO to borrowing from the illegal lenders and remember to only borrow from legal lenders.”
· “We’re concerned with the health and economic welfare of our employees, customers, our love ones and even strangers. We’ll do everything we can to continue operating during this crisis.”
· “We’re working to adapt and was glad that the staff can adapt to remote meetings and working from home. This could be a new trend to encourage work from home and help small businesses like us to save rental.”
· “COVID-19 definitely has affected our businesses, but the ultimate impact will depend on how long the quarantines last. Although we were asked to continue to stay open and offer jobs to our staff, ideally this is great…but we’re going to experience revenue loss, so it’s difficult to determine how long we can still afford everyone on our payroll.”
· “I think we may be being prudent with the cautions we’re exercising. There should be plenty of business opportunities when we come out of this, and we need to be ready for it!”
· “COVID-19 is pandemic in terms of transmission, but we can control the virus from spreading through healthy practices. Today’s businesses can shift their communication channels to match customers’ current needs, and that will create new opportunities.”
Today’s uncertainty will mean that we cannot just run our business as usual and BizBridge is positive that we can overcome this difficulty period together. Please stay connected, stay engaged and trust us!
BizBridge hope to walk this journey with you as our customers and help you get the necessary funding options and embrace a better tomorrow.