• Refocus your organization’s mission

Before the beginning of the year, ask yourself what your business should look like. Be clear on the mission of your organization because this will help you make sound decisions. Knowing what you want to do will help you adjust to your circumstances and know where you want to go. You must discuss these issues on all levels of your organization as it will impact everyone.

• Understand your organization

As a business owner, you must know your organization’s posture, strengths and weaknesses. This will help you understand how you will move on and how to respond to a crisis. It enables you to know when to shut down, scale down operations, increase operations, and cut expenses. Understanding the organization will improve decision-making and response to problems that emerge on the way. With the pandemic that has affected businesses for example, understanding an organization will make it easy to develop alternative working arrangements that will ensure people are socially distanced.  

• Poor customer service will chase your customers

Pandemic or not, customer service is always the king, or queen for that matter. Regardless of the challenges you are facing, you must always try as much as possible to ensure that your customers are satisfied. This needs to be a priority going into 2021. According to a research by Sprout Social, 49% of customers claim that they will unfollow brands due to bad customer service on social media. This speaks a lot about the view of customers on the importance of customer service. Moving forward, learn to listen to what customers say and do not ignore any questions and demands, whether online or offline. As you think of how you can improve your customer service going into 2021, take some time to evaluate past customer feedback and how inquiries are handled and note areas that can be enhanced.

• Invest in remote work

The coronavirus pandemic has shown us that we can do many things remotely and that we should not spend too much money on physical meetings, that can still be achieved through Zoom and other platforms. It has shown that remote meetings can serve as the best alternative to on-site meetings. These meetings can help reduce the cost of operations. As you head towards 2021, think for alternative methods of conducting meetings and doing work that will reduce the cost of operations. Consider Skype, Zoom and Google Meet, among other available options.

• Get your budgeting in order

Forecast what lies ahead especially if you want to make changes in your expenditure or if you are thinking of taking a loan. While budgeting helps reduce unwanted expenditure, its purpose can also be to identify sources of money and how it is spent. Knowing the source of your money and expenses will be helpful in 2021 because it limits misuse of funds.

• Save some money

Regardless of the type of business you are operating, you must save some cash just in case you might need it. Saving some amount can help in many ways. First, you can always use the saved amount for emergency, that had not been budgeted. As we head into a new year, always keep some spare amount that you can run to when need arises.