COVID-19 Business Impact — Frozen Garden
The covid-19 pandemic has caused a major economic shock to many industries. And in this week’s blog, I will explore the impact of COVID-19 on a small business which is Frozen Garden. As I mentioned before, Frozen Garden creates artisan healthy Ready to Blend Smoothies and Fusion Beverage Infusers. They source as many ingredients as possible from local farmers. They make organic fresh smoothies weekly and ship to your door directly with no subscription required.
How the brand adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic?
During the pandemic time, the founder Allyson Straka wrote a “Covid-19: our commitment to you” on their official website. In this letter, they mainly talked about in order to keep customers and employees safe and healthy, they will follow the CDC and FDA guidelines. And they also introduced some specific steps of how to follow. This transparency commitment reduces customers’ anxiety. On the other hand, besides this commitment letter, Frozen garden put more effort into collaborating with the biggest e-commerce platform which is Amazon. For instance, in October 2020. They cooperate with Amazon and provide coupons for their product which is on the Amazon platform. From my own perspective, this is a wise reaction. Because of the COVID-19, more and more customers get used to shopping online. So, collaborating with the biggest e-commerce platform is a great digital opportunity.
However, regarding their reaction to COVID-19, I think they should improve their customer services for the long run. Until now, visitors can only access their customer services through phone or email without the use of an automated system. With an increasing number of complaints of shipping delays because of the pandemic, customers cannot get to know their order status immediately. This brings uncertainty to the whole process of consumers’ shopping experience. Even though they made COVID updates for shipping and explained the reason why most of the orders are delayed through their website. Customers are more willing to get a quick response for their personal order which is critical for customer satisfaction and customer retention.
The pandemic accelerates the exposure of Frozen Garden’s customer service problems. Good customer service encourages customers to remain loyal. Of course, small business is on a low budget and there are more constrains when allocating funds. However, there’s a saying “Customer retention is cheaper than customer acquisition.”
