Are You Ready To Work From Home?

Are you ready to work from home?
With all the uncertainty about Covid 19 swirling around like Pinot Noir in a big Burgundy balloon glass, all of us are just a splash anxious about the future of our careers.

My colleagues and I were talking about this at work the other day and thankfully, because we work in the Wine Club Department at St. Francis Winery, we can all easily work from home. Our work is virtually, er, virtual. All of our customer interaction is over the phone, via email and snail mail.

As I was writing this up, I heard Governor Newsome’s statement that all California wineries and breweries were to be closed until things are under control. Here we go, folks…

Just yesterday, I spoke about this with Paul Thienes, Founder & CEO of eCellar, who said this emerging crisis underscores the importance of winery staff’s ability to work with their data wherever they are working from geographically.  They need to search, segment and target specific customers to make personal experiences available online, and take orders.  Whether the customer responds to order wine online via the shopping cart, customizing their club order, or call you to place it over the phone – it’s important that your website and POS operates at a nearby browser to capture the order into a single database for all to see, manage and ship.

Also – with our ability to use video technologies, such as Zoom or even FaceTime, we can safely offer 1:1 tasting experiences with our best customers.  It’s time to call them and reserve some private, personalized remote tastings!

Here’s a bright spot in this time of uncertainty – if we have to hunker down and do “Social Distancing,” and work from home, at least we have wine, right? All of our customers need our wine right now more than ever, so if UPS and FedEx keep on shipping, let’s keep on selling!

Let’s stay safe, wash our hands, try to relax and open some good bottles. Bacchus knows, we deserve it.

Cheers!

Sue