ESP COVID-19 Company Update as of 3/20/2020
Dear ESP Clients and Employees,
Many of our clients are part of the “essential” business supply chain and need our services to operate, which makes ESP essential too. Our intention is to maintain normal operations, as possible within our control, while following social distancing guidelines for COVID-19. Friday 3/20/2020 ESP will be providing all our services, including Customer Service, mail processing and product fulfillment. If anyone feels unsafe or is sick then please stay home. ESP will keep you posted if there are any clarifications or changes to the policy.
Stay Safe. Wash your hands. Keep a safe distance.
For more tips on how to stay safe and healthy during this pandemic, please see refer to the CDC’s updates.
ESP COVID-19 Company Update as of 3/18/2020
Dear Clients,
We are looking ahead in the case of quarantine and trying to take a pro-active approach to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on all of us. We have some suggestions that we hope you find helpful and might want to consider.
1) Now would be a good time to capture your subscribers’ email address so it’s easier to correspond. I have a spreadsheet that I have shared with your ESP AE that shows the number of active accounts, by account type that does not have an email address. You can inquire with your AE if the count is significant and then we suggest that you try to update the email addresses. You might be able to do this by adding text to any correspondence or directing them to the web to update or even call or email with their account information.
2) Please try to also get the message out to your subscribers to pay via the web instead of sending a check. Maybe add that as a reminder to any communications or even try a separate email effort to encourage them to pay online.
Please contact your AE if you need any help in implementing these suggestions.
We do expect the USPS to stay open and we also believe that as a service provider for media companies that we will be allowed to have employees come to work even under a ‘shelter in place’ order. Of course, the safety of our employees and customers come first and we will continue to monitor this evolving situation.
ESP COVID-19 Company Update as of 3/12/2020
Dear Clients,
We’d like to share with you our company’s current COVID-19 plans.
We have already transformed into a company that can work remotely so many of the employees will work from home.
If we come under quarantine, this is what we would do for these key services:
1) Depending on the location of the outbreak, shift customer service to a location that is not affected. (ESP has customer service and data entry offices in California and in Illinois.) If both offices are affected then provide support by routing calls to cust-svc homes and allowing them to read and respond to email from home.
2) Programming support can be done from home.
3) Systems maintenance and support can be done from home, except in case of hardware tasks (unlikely).
4) Account Executives already all work from home.
5) Non-human customer support options can be added – like the AI chatbot.
We recommend you implement this right away so if necessary it can be customized to your requirements.
I don’t have a specific solution for picking up and processing the mail, but I think the post office might have some provisions and guidance. So we would play that by ear. Certainly, one of the first steps, if we can’t print any bills or renewals, is to change any outbound mail to email. For subscribers that will expire soon, you might consider email messaging and perhaps gracing.
For Lettershop, product fulfillment and other duties that require a physical presence and no ability to work remotely, we’d issue face masks and disinfect.
Thank you for your patience and cooperation as we work through this evolving public health emergency. Please stay safe.
Regards,
Stefan Beeli
CEO