We at CCS, like all of you, have been watching the news and reading updates about the Covid-19 virus.
While we believe that overall the chance of infection is relatively low, we also believe very strongly in a sense of community. We are committed to our work family, to our broader community in Oklahoma and certainly to our community of clients and lab customers. We also feel strongly that we should be especially mindful of those members of our community who are immunosuppressed, have high risk-factors for illness and to the men and women in our medical communities trying to make us safe.
It is with all these factors in mind that we have made some changes in our Oklahoma City operations.
Effective immediately we will have as many CCS staff members as possible working remotely for the next 2 weeks. This change is to create some social distancing which will hopefully also reduce stress (which can lower immune systems) and to allow staff flexibility to care for family & children who have their normal school, daycare and caretaker resources disrupted.
This change does include our support department.
As we transition to working from home, Customer Support has a few team members who are still waiting on external access to our regular phone system. We would appreciate during this time that IF POSSIBLE you use our traditional email and chat support options or schedule phone time in advance with staff members if you do not have an emergency. To be clear, we will have staff available for your calls during normal business hours and emergency after-hours. We also expect our additional phone systems to be online within a few days. We appreciate your patience as we adjust to this new process and get our entire team online with full capabilities.
Changes to travel policies
We have suspended the commitment of staff traveling for training, conference and other work-related visits until further notice. At CCS we love nothing more than going on-location to help our customers with shoots, photography, software training, etc. However, we feel we can no longer ask our work family (and their loved ones) to take this risk. We do not expect this restriction to last long, but we appreciate your understanding.
Changes to our primary production facility
In addition to following CDC guidelines which include facilitating and encouraging good hand washing, employees staying home if they are sick and undertaking additional cleaning measures, CCS is instituting additional precautionary measures. These measures include things such as check points for hand sanitizing, leaving doors open during prime entrance/exit times to reduce touchpoints, becoming more liberal in our sick leave, using work stations which are highly separated, changes to our food and break room policies and making sure our work family has all of the information and support that they need to stay safe and healthy. It is with these additional measures that we plan to continue to serve and support our customers in every way possible.
We do anticipate some changes to the way we schedule production staff as needed. However, we will keep a close eye on service times, rush orders, special requests and artwork orders so that you can continue to generate income as normal. We are especially mindful of keeping our remittance schedule (giving back the money we collect online on your behalf) at our current rate and potentially event faster.
Providing you with tools and ideas to continue to generate income
We know that many of our customers are already feeling the financial impact of the precautionary measures being taken across the nation as schools, sports and special events are cancelled or postponed. We know that many are afraid for the future during these uncertain times. We will be sending out ideas over the coming days and weeks to help you generate business during these hard times and salvage business by suggesting ideas to your clients which may help turn a cancellation into something different. We will have frequent webinars and discussions on specific topics such as ways to ensure that graduation ceremonies continue and how to adapt to their new needs. We want to help in any way that we can. We are also encouraging the sharing of ideas for the good of our customers and the greater photography community.
We appreciate your business
As you know, CCS considers customers to be partners and friends. We will do everything possible to help in these unprecedented times. Please accept our appreciation in advance for your patience as we navigate these times in the best interest of our employees, community and our valued customers.
Sincerely,
Jack Counts Jr., Alison Counts and the Candid Color Systems family
