How to make a hygiene regime to bring your customers back, Trust Pilot and PR lessons from The Office.

Hello, welcome to the speak PR podcast with me, Jim James. I'm your host today. And I have been running a PR firm for over 25 years. And on this podcast I like to share information and insight that I've got about how companies like yours can get themselves noticed without spending a lot of money. Now, this morning, I had a conversation as part of a webinar about encouraging customers to get back to work and to shops and in this particular case, how to get them to go back to sports therapy centres. Now, the whole area of business where the hands are on and people are close to each other, whether it's sports, or restaurants or lifestyle, obviously has one major obstacle right now. And that is a lack of confidence. There's a lack of confidence in the consumers about places being safe. So it's really the height factor that is going to be the topic for this today's talk, and how you can rebuild trust in your organization's handling of hygiene. It used to be that before COVID we didn't even think about hygiene unless maybe we'll look at the star rating for the kitchen on a restaurant. But the assumption was a course that all establishments conformed to the necessary standard. Now, the problem is that the the standards have all been increased, and people don't necessarily trust that the new standards are being followed. But also companies and organisations and people like physiotherapists, for example, have now to communicate that they've actually taken action and that they are safeguarding the well being of their staff and their customers when they're moving from going into their facilities. And one of the observations that came out today was that cheaper, less regulated physiotherapists have been started. To open and taking on business, but without really heating all the new government guidelines. They have maybe less expensive facilities. And they got customers who are maybe not as interested in the in all the frippery and all the normal security insanity of the hygiene factors.

So

the problem with that is, of course, that these unqualified professionals are taking business from the qualified ones. So in the same way that the internet has enabled fake news to become commonplace, it's allowed for us to look as professional as the professionals. Now, I'd never heard the term of furu before and I have to thank Brian Hill for this but it's it's a term that looked up after the talk. And a thorough actually it started off as a Norwegian bought a Norwegian word, the furrow which is actually a kind of pine tree, so Maybe the original expression comes from not be able to see the wood for the trees. But now a furrow is a fake guru. So it's someone who is saying and professing to be good, but actually they're not. And this is applying across many, many industries from financial services, to physiotherapy, to coaching, and anywhere where individuals are practising are practising with or without qualifications. Now the international coaching Federation, which is the largest organisation in the USA, believes that the number of coaches has grown to somewhere around 55,000 worldwide.

But I think that's even

a little bit a little bit small because in the UK alone, the number of employed and self employed sports coaches and instructors has been reported by statistics as being over 109,000 Okay, so we've got over 100,000 people in the sports, physio, coaching instructors. And there are some 70,000 physiotherapists alone employed in the UK. So this means that we've got at least 150, maybe 200,000. People who right now are looking at how to get their customers and their patients to come back into the clinics. That's not even talked about yet dentists, for example, and any other service that you might run that involves in proximity between the person providing the service and the client. So the question really now is how do how do companies and facilities reassure their their customers? And as I reported on earlier podcast, some only 24% of people employees are actually feeling comfortable going to work themselves, because they don't trust themselves. facilities will will have the certain hygiene levels that they need to keep them safe. So hygiene now has become probably the biggest issue facing all companies, especially those in the service area. So how do we do that? Now, the army apparently, according to Brian Hill, who was in the army has a term safe where they use the prefix safe, for example, a safe drill a safe around a safe guard, a safe house. And that seems like a nice terminology, terminology that we can be using in our marketing and our public relations about our facilities being open and being safe. Now,

how do we do that? How do we do that? Well,

I think that there are a few ways.

One is to start to actively highlight

what act what programmes you've got in place around hygiene Now, the the growth market in the UK is, is one of them is hygiene and cleaning. Now, it's possible to start to use the fact that you're either partnering or hiring professional janitors and cleaning services to be part of your marketing proposition. Now there's a company for example called Nesbit's at a Bristol that provides a huge range of authorised and high quality cleaning products. So, if you don't want to actually hire a janitorial service, you want to do it yourself. Could you be using established brands that other consumers are already familiar with? If you, for example, using Rubbermaid or you're using data? How can you create the reassurance for people coming or thinking about coming, that you're investing in hygiene because investing in hygiene is investing in their well being That's really Now what this is about, it's about reassurance. Now, it's also possible to then start to demonstrate to people that you're doing that. Now, something that has become quite interesting that the home could be something that's done in your office and that is to be recording yourself filming your cleaning, or, for example, posting photographs of the facility being cleaned in in Singapore, where I live for for a number of years in the in the toilets, also in Hong Kong, but the toilets of the airport, there are in their little monitors and you click a smiley face if you know how clean is is my toilet. Now, they're doing real time monitoring, obviously, and cameras. So it's one opportunity to start to demonstrate to your consumers or your customers or your patients. Your your regime for hygiene. So this term just made that up. Actually, the regime for hygiene as a theme for some marketing is one that could really resonate right now. Now, it's possible for example, to instal cameras in the reception area, it's possible to have people see the cleaning taking place, and certainly in China, where I lived as well for 12 years, there were large televisions, in the reception of the restaurants. And the televisions were showing not TV, but they were showing the people working in the kitchen. So they would televise in real time the the staff in order to show you that they're all clean and that they're washing the knives and the bamboo and so on. So streaming information from the office, or the factory or the Patient Care Area is one option, one opportunity. And if you are then partnering with a well known brand, a catering or cleaning company, make sure that they've got the same certification as you're aspiring to have, and you create this alliance of cleanliness. Okay, so the hygiene regime has an alliance of cleanliness. And you're lining all the partners up using established brands that consumers and patients recognise and trust. Don't try and build the trust in the in the cleaning products, that's not your job. But what you can be doing is showing people that you're using these established brands and that you've got a system in a regime. Now, you can also use, for example, hub staff have got a time tracking app. Now. They have a time tracking app for cleaning stuff with what they called geo fencing. So what it means is when staff go into a particular facility, it tracks They've gone into that facility and it creates, it creates metrics. It creates data. And that data can be streamed in real time to your website, for example, or even to a Facebook Live. So it's possible then to stream your your results in video but also the data of the cleaning crews actually going in. Now in Singapore, the National environment agencies issued a sanitation, Health Advisory. They have an infographic which they have created for their staff. And they've created that also for the stallholders in the hawker centres, which are these outdoor feeding centres where it's a course possibly a haven for something like COVID. So it's not just about you having a plan. It's about making sure that all of your staff have a plan as well and that the staff know what the habits are because you're only going to be as clean as your cleanest member of staff and You're going to need to make sure that everybody is educated about the regime. But also, if you decide to film, for example, to take pictures, it's a good idea to make sure that everybody signs a form to acknowledge that they know that there is filming taking place in the facility, because you don't want to have a privacy issue. Needless to say, you can't film people in bathrooms, you can take still pictures and not have people there, obviously. But so, with the technology comes some responsibility to inform people. But one of the ideas as well can be to actually instal, for example, a visitor management system. At the moment, if people come into your facility, what do they do? Do they have to sign on a piece of paper? Do they have to stand next to somebody? Well, visitor management systems where people come in, and now you can get them where you simply scan a QR code, a quick response code. modern digital officers have got these well receptionist can have Because now, you don't necessarily come into contact with

people.

You can have people come and they can receive a prior booking, just like they would do with Eventbrite, for example. They're scanning. So we're replacing some of the old fashioned sheets, and enhancing security at the same time as improving hygiene. So this regime for hygiene goes throughout the whole process now with social mobile analytics and the cloud, what's called smack the opportunity for collecting and sharing information about what you're doing is greater than ever, and you don't have to be in the facility anymore to be collecting that. So there are some 2000 IP camera models available on the internet. So they come from big brands, like Panasonic D link, Sony, and in Beijing, I installed one of these cameras Very low cost 2030 pounds, and it would take pictures when anybody moved. And it would send those pictures up to the internet and I could monitor them myself. So if you've got staff going in to do cleaning, and you want to make sure that you know that they're there, you can also instal some technology in your in your office or your facility to track them going in. But also that could then create proof point that you have got that. Now, what you can also do, of course, is to start to get customers who are now coming back in to display a confidence with your facility by using a platform like trustpilot trustpilot calm is used by over 300,000 businesses worldwide apparently. And they have over a trillion ratings. Now these ratings are displayed on your website. They're also displayed on Google. So it means that you can verify reviews from people that are coming to your facility, for example. And that can also then contribute to your Google seller rating. You can upgrade and you can have automated review invitation emails, so that customers can leave feedback as well. And they can get a friendly email reminder to even get more reviews. So your Google seller ratings, your social sharing, they even have a widget test. So you can run an A B test on your website to see whether if you have this and don't have this trustpilot on your website, how do people respond and do they buy more or less or make more bookings now trustpilot is a technology is free for the basic package. So you can actually have trustpilot. com on your website for free. Obviously, it works if you've got enough people but you can Almost use this if you've got people coming into your facility or your studio or your your practice and get people to give a reassurance because, as I said the other day about the banks and the new startup bank called counting up, I was looking for reassurance by other people. It's not enough to read their own PR. What I'd like to do is to see what other people have said about them. So you can have with trustpilot 165 pounds a month, if you want to add in some of the bells and whistles including more email for example, and you can upgrade to 449 pounds if you've got a really big organisation, maybe a chain of restaurants for example of chain of hotels or a chain of practices and physiotherapist. So you can get reviews. You can showcase your reviews, you can manage reviews and you can analyse reviews. So this is all geared towards demonstrating that your hygiene regime is in practice. That other consumers and customers, or partners, or staff are coming and buying into what you've created and feeling safe. And this is really going to be a key part of getting people back into the system and back into into life in general. Now, of course, one opportunity that that may come out, if you decide, for example, to go down that path of streaming that content is you might create a new version of the office. Now, the Office for those of us that remember we started all the way back in July of 2001 says nearly 20 years old now created and written and directed by Ricky Gervais, and Stephen Merchant. Now, it's it's one of those great success stories in the UK that only ran two seasons. So it only actually had very low rating. So if there'd been a trustpilot before the office, it wouldn't I've done very well. It actually

only had two seasons, but it went on to become

internationally known. And, and recently in America, the American office became the internet's favourite show. And amazingly enough, the outpost of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, as a, an office show, is worth 100 million dollars a year. So now, the business of watching other people doing their business has become a bigger business than the business itself. And maybe that is an inspiration to you because it could be that the inspiration of taking an initiative on the health regime and making hygiene your regime, making social sharing, and getting people back to work could be a lesson that you can grow and share and actually monetize at some stage for your own business. And definitely any of the winners right now will be companies that other people want to talk to. So it'll be great for your own PR. So thank you so much for listening to this episode of speak PR. My name is Jim James. If you like the show, please leave a review. There are many other podcasts in the series and I invite you to listen to those as well. If you've got any comments or views, please do send them to me. I'd be more than happy to listen and to respond. Thank you for listening to the speak br podcast. My name is Jim James. And until we meet again, I pray that you have good health. Wish you a profitable business and ensure that you keep on communicating