Question

Economic Impact- Global and Local It is believed that life after corona won’t be the same as before corona, economically, socially, and personally. From an economic perspective, it was unprecedented to observe the “global paralysis” that threatens to destabilize the economic balance. Locally, the level of unemployment filing hit a record high. Small business, which represent close to 30 Million in number and account for more than 50% of the workforce were hit the hardest. Even with the injected financial stimuli, experts believe that if they do not get the much-needed help in a timely manner, then small business will not be able to survive, leading to a devastating damage to the economy.

What will the economic impact on small businesses be post COVID-19? How long will it take to recover? What are the overall lessons learned from this pandemic as related to small businesses?

Answer 1

The impact of the coronavirus outbreak requires companies to move at an unprecedented speed and that means re-evaluating how contact centers are leveraged, how employees deliver relevant customer experiences, where they work, and how digital channels can be used to support the increase in contact center volume.

During this time, leaders that can shift to new ways of working help to reduce potential revenue loss, forge new levels of trust with their workforce, and position their businesses for renewed growth once the pandemic subsides. Consider banking, for example, where social distancing restrictions will push customers toward digital channels for service and increase the need for a connected, responsive team.

During times of crisis, contact centers are crucial. We recommend that contact center executives address three critical areas.

The biggest surprise about pandemics is that we are still surprised they happen. There are more than 1,400 known human pathogens and almost all of them are capable of causing epidemic increases. Starting as localised outbreaks, they could develop into pandemics that, left unchecked, may infect millions of people. There are also hundreds of animal diseases that have the capacity to cross the species barrier, causing new pandemic diseases, as Sars did in 2002-03.

The feature of infectious diseases that distinguishes them from other illnesses is that they change markedly over time, giving rise to new human diseases. This is because the microbes that cause them are constantly evolving. A case in point is antimicrobial resistance. As soon as we treat infectious diseases we are creating evolutional pressure to select for resistance strains, hence new disease problems.

Ebola: how NHS hospitals are preparing for an outbreak

Looking across the past century of pandemics provides a rich source of information for epidemiologists, microbiologists and historians to draw on. Five lessons leap out from this experience: pandemics have high impact, increase inequalities, behave in uncertain ways, are often controllable and generally cause panic and outrage.

1. Impact

Uncontrolled pandemics can be devastating. The 1918 influenza pandemic killed more than 50 million people within a year. HIV/Aids is estimated to have killed more than 39 million people since the first cases were reported in 1981. Pandemics also disrupt societies and economies and cause widespread secondary effects. The World Bank estimated that the two-year socioeconomic effect of the current Ebola epidemic could reach $32.6bn – its worst-case scenario.

2. Inequalities

Pandemics love poverty. In that regard they mirror the distribution of infectious diseases more generally, which appear to be sensitive markers of deprivation. The pathways by which poverty increases risk include: inadequate sanitation, poor nutrition, crowded living conditions, lack of healthcare services, poor infection control, lack of public health infrastructure and poor governance.

Ebola: Skype consultations could help prevent an outbreak in the UK

3. Uncertainty

Although we know a lot about the conditions that give rise to pandemics, the emergence of individual pandemics is unpredictable. There is inevitabe uncertainty around the transmissibility of new infectious agents and their seriousness (case fatality) during their early stages. Scientific methods for estimating these parameters are getting better.

4. Controllability

Most pandemics are now controllable, as was demonstrated with Sars. Ebola can be controlled with well-established measures of case isolation, contact quarantine and good infection control in hospitals. The one major exception is pandemic influenza – public health measures and pharmaceutical interventions have only limited effectiveness and pandemic vaccines take months to develop and deliver.

5. Panic/outrage

Fear is a natural human response to new threats. Unfortunately this reaction frequently translated into panic and outrage in the face of pandemic diseases. Effective risk communication is key to managing this response.