TSIA’s Rapid Research Response Capabilities Inventory

SLA Reassessment: Recommunicate or renegotiate SLAs based on your actual ability to respond to customer requests.

Customer Support Communications: Communications to your customer support contacts about how you will be supporting them given the current crisis.

Customer Training Communications: Communications to your customers regarding training that has been, will be cancelled, or will be moving to online. Communications to your customers regarding how the organization is handling face-to-face training, both currently and in the future. 

Employee Communications Training: Training for all of your customer-facing teams regarding how to speak about the company’s response to the crisis. 

Centralized Communications Team: Create a team for centralized communication to your customers, partners, and employees throughout the crisis.

Documented Business Continuity Plan: Procedures that should be executed so that mission-critical business functions can keep operating during and after a disaster.

Documented Risk Management Methodology: The processes employed for assessing, monitoring, and mitigating the negative effects uncertain events would have on the organizations responsible for delivering specific engagements.

Leveraging Local Partners: The ability to engage local channel partners in assuring local customer care is possible as needed for your customers with critical needs during the crisis.

Renewal Management: The assignment of additional sales cycles to protect recurring revenue streams.

Centralized Pricing Review: Establish a centralized team to authorize changes to offer list prices or discount policies during the crisis.

Fewer CSAT and NPS Transactional Surveys: During the crisis, stop or lower the volume of transactional surveys.

Customer-Only Secure Portal: A member-only, secure web and/or mobile portal through which you can communicate any urgent updates regarding your services.

Partner-Only Secure Portal: A partner-only, secure web and/or mobile portal through which you can engage your partners, approve pricing and special terms, enable communications, and assist with escalation of presales and post sales customer requirements. 

Remote Partner Assistance: Capability to assist your channel partners remotely as necessary for their emergency needs.

Remote Implementation: Ability to implement your offers remotely.

Remote Support: Remote dial-in support and/or online diagnostics.

Virtual Instruction: Live virtual instructor-led training and/or online learning options.

Employee Deployment Policies: Clear process and criteria for when you are willing to deploy service staff onto a customer's site.

Travel Policy: Clear process and criteria for approving employee travel.

Work from Home Policies and Tools: Formalized and documented work from home policies. Technical configurations to support at home employees.

Flexible Worksite Policies: Established policies for flexible worksite (e.g. telecommuting) and flexible work hours (e.g. staggered shifts).

Employee Mental Health Services: Adequate mental health resources for your employees during the crisis.

Participation in Marketplaces: Evaluate the participation in various external facing, well publicized marketplaces in order to enable broader customer engagement and potential e-commerce opportunities.

Reallocation of Sales Resources: Programs to effectively utilize sales resources during a slow down in opportunity management activities. 

Crisis Payment Policies: Criteria and processes to determine when to offer extended payment terms or grace periods for payments.

Quota Review: Process for determining if quotas should be reduced based on the impact of the crisis.

Revisit Compensation of Direct - Indirect Opportunity Sales Engagement During Travel Restrictions: Process to determine if it is possible to have direct sales and partner sellers in the territory work more closely together and explore more creative compensation for direct sellers when assisted by a local partner.

Crisis Offer Promotions: Ability to create new offers that leverage non-face-to-face delivery options.

Value Proposition Assessment: Process for assessing and reengineering your value proposition if it is at risk in a virtual delivery environment. 

Maximizing in a Downturn: Process for assessing where there is slack in the organization being created by the crisis and how to reallocate that slack to building strategic capabilities that will serve the company well post crisis.

Post-Crisis Strategy: Process to evaluate the current business strategy and assess what changes will be required to succeed in the post crisis marketplace.