This year was difficult for every business, and Tulfa is no exception. Since March, our company has faced many challenges and has survived, even thrived. From our tribulations have come valuable lessons that have only strengthened us. In this blog, we want to reflect on and share some important things that we learned from the unforgettable year of 2020.
How to Remain Together, Even When We’re Apart
This year, we learned that there are ways to keep your business alive, even without direct interaction between employees and clients. The most challenging aspect of working from home is proper communication. While phone calls are easily made to communicate daily, it can be difficult to understand and address work-related issues without in-person interaction. Luckily, tools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom and ClickUp greatly assist us with communication, productivity and accountability.
For every employee who is currently working from home, we deployed workflow setups, including computers, necessary equipment and inverters/UPS to prevent data loss from power or internet interruption. Employees are prepared with communication and escalation protocols, work-from-home guidelines and troubleshooting procedures. They maintain a direct line of communication with any Tulfa employee and are briefed daily by key decision makers. In some ways, we are more connected than we ever were before the pandemic.
How to Succeed by Empowering Our Employees
Many of Tulfa’s India employees live far away from our office in Hyderabad, so they currently stay in nearby hotels and hostels to shorten their commutes to work. When India ordered these living establishments to close to prevent the spread of disease, many of our dedicated employees were left without places to stay.
For our employees who could not work from home, we converted one of our large office spaces into a work shelter stocked with everything our valuable workers needed to live. Dubbed our “tiger team,” these employees selflessly volunteered to live in this shelter to ensure critical content was edited and deliveries were met. To put it simply, Tulfa would not have gotten through 2020 without them.
How to Create Engaging, Online Experiences
With many people foregoing in-store shopping out of safety, the pandemic has opened the floodgates for an online shopping boon that was previously only predicted five to ten years from now. While potential for online sellers to succeed is at an all-time high, so is their competition. Making their product listings and websites stand out to attract customers is a necessity, or they must otherwise risk being buried by those who can.
The key here is quality content. If a customer sees top-of-the-line product photos, videos and descriptions, they are much more inclined to buy. However, this is easier said than done. As more people shop online, that number will only continue to increase unless businesses embrace quality, enhanced content.
One of the biggest assets sellers use to make their products stand out is 3D product modeling. With just basic product specifications, content agencies use today’s CGI technology to create fully interactive, 3D models that give customers the ability to view products from any angle, at their own pace.
These models are compatible with augmented reality software that gives sellers the tools to create virtual worlds tailored to specific products. This allows customers to “try” products in multiple environments, even their own home, boosting their confidence to purchase. Once embraced, 3D models will likely replace traditional product photography entirely.
In this rapidly changing world, the ecommerce industry’s most successful businesses are already embracing this technology to stay ahead of the curve. Consumers want it, they just don’t know it yet.
How to Take Care of Ourselves
Like the rest of the world, the pandemic brought many changes that affected our daily lives and well-being. We are very fortunate to have maintained our workforce without any employees losing their jobs, but many of us suffered blows to health, both mentally and physically. The pandemic may be caused by a fatal virus, but isolation made things even more difficult. With states going in and out of lockdown, many people have been unable to travel and see their families and friends for several months. The holiday season has only made this void more apparent. Although quarantine is worth it to keep our loved ones safe, it doesn’t make it any easier.
What does make things easier is finding new ways to occupy our time and interact with others. As terrible as the pandemic is, at least it happened in 2020, when much of the world is well-equipped with technology to communicate remotely. During these last few months, our Tulfa family got together over several virtual events, including happy hours, yoga classes, birthday parties and a Thanksgiving celebration. These are small but meaningful moments that our team shared to make up for lost time. Every event made this isolating year a little bit easier and hopefully a little bit more fun.
