How to Use Guides to Communicate in Crisis

The COVID-19 crisis has upended business in a matter of weeks, forcing companies to adjust their messaging and communication strategy in real-time. Pendo customers have relied on in-app messaging to get mission-critical information right in front of users while they’re using the software. From providing coronavirus-related updates and promoting timely webinars to nimbly scaling up their onboarding processes, here’s how Pendo helped them execute new strategies in record time.

Onboarding thousands of new users

When schools around the world shuttered in recent weeks amid efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus, Firefly Learning experienced unprecedented demand for its online learning platform. Suddenly, the company faced the prospect of onboarding six months’ worth of new users in one week while making sure the service remained reliable. Pendo’s in-app guidance helped them scale their onboarding process to meet the challenge and proactively address support issues, while in-app announcements targeted at segments of users kept them informed and pointed them toward COVID-19 related resources

Promoting free offerings 

Absolute Software recognized that many customers would face new security challenges as they shifted to remote work. That’s why they decided to open up their top-tier offering, which includes the ability to automatically repair and secure the virtual private networks many companies are using to work from home, to every user, free of charge, until the end of August. Pendo’s in-app messaging offered a way to “easily, cleanly, and compellingly” ensure that users knew the offering was available and had an easy way to take advantage of it.

PetDesk leveraged a Pendo guide to make users aware that they’re offering access to a new, typically upsold feature for free during COVID-19. The feature opens up a two-way text message service between veterinary care providers and their clients, allowing them to easily arrange curbside drop-off, answer pet health questions, and provide information on pet telehealth services.

Aysling, an enterprise resource management platform, used Pendo guides to announce that it was making its Live Chat customer support feature free for all of March and April. The company is also delivering educational videos embedded in Pendo guides, showing users how to accommodate their own customers amid disruptive times and offering solutions to some of the most common support tickets. A third guide solicited feedback from those users. The company also used guides to display banner messages early in the pandemic linking users to information about Aysling’s response, and they’ll be deploying more guides with tips on working from home.

Real-time communication and support

Nelnet, the largest servicer of student loans in the United States, used Pendo to drive a multi-faceted strategy to improve communication with the teachers who use their services to access school information or parents and students trying to pay tuition amid the coronavirus outbreak. Pendo in-app messaging and a Resource Center, which offers on-demand support resources for users, were used to announce the company’s response to the crisis, connect users with new resources, and advertise new webinars. One of those webinars hit its registration cap. Here’s a look at how guides drove up engagement with resources for educators planning to move operations off-campus:

Now, they’re using Data Explorer, Pendo’s tool for visualizing and reporting usage data, to develop a COVID-19-related traffic dashboard. 

As orthodontic practices around the world close down their physical locations amid the COVID-19 outbreak, OrthoFi is helping practices continue to operate remotely by offering telemedicine options for patients. OrthoFi is using Pendo guides to keep doctors and practices informed of insurance carrier closures and other timely information critical to their sustained operations.

School Management software LINQ used Pendo in-app messaging to deliver important information to its customers about how Covid-19 would change its operations, offer online ordering at no cost and reassure them that they’d receive the same level of support that they were used to. This proactive measure helped to head off an expected surge of about 50 hours’ worth of support calls.

APS Payroll used a Pendo guide on its home page to direct users to a landing page filled with resources and information related to the coronavirus and how it is affecting the human resources and payroll industry.

Workwave, a field services management platform, used in-app banner messaging across all three of its products to distribute a letter about the company’s response to the crisis and support it was providing to the industries it serves. Another banner guide links users to a landing page full of useful coronavirus-related information from various trade organizations seeking help in being classified essential businesses as quarantine and social distancing measures rolled out across the country.