By Nikkie Nguyen, Account Executive, C3 Public Strategies
As we sit down and reflect on last year, the series of events that led us through 2020 really makes crazy seem like an understatement, doesn’t it? Our days and weeks all seemed to blend into each other stacked with various Zoom calls throughout the day, restricted commutes to the grocery store and other essential business, and an ongoing shortage of pretty much everything we could think of: food, water, PPE, and even toilet paper and paper towels (that was one that really shocked us all, wasn’t it?). And because I’m a millennial, I remember our Amazon prime and other online orders turned into two to four week delays for package deliveries. A year ago, if we asked anyone on our team if the pandemic and all that came with it was possible, it would probably all seem beyond our wildest dreams– it still is. COVID-19 shook us all and caused a domino effect all across the United States .
March 2020, C3 did not make it through this tough time solely through luck. Like many companies, at the start, it took management daily phone calls to formulate and execute plans to figure out how we can support our team in its entirety and move on to virtual platforms like Zoom. What set our struggles apart from most of the other entities is that a majority of our services and specializations encompassed door-to-door field campaigns. With the constant back-and-forth between our state and county regulations, C3 decided to close its in-person operations and office temporarily.
Our upper-management team saw this as an opportunity to use this time to get connected with our voters solely via existing phone banking and mass texting services. Within a week, we moved our field operations to phone banking for a city council race. In roughly about two to three weeks, we had our CHANGE-CA field team virtually phone banking and reaching out to voters to ensure they were getting the assistance needed. By mid-April, we were running phone banking operations in support of two special elections. Our team worked tirelessly and went to even greater lengths to innovate and reveal a new way to converse with voters via video canvassing. Video canvassing aided our efforts to do more outreach for our client in the Senate District 28 special election. From that point, we continued to utilize our resources to follow up on phone conversations. We wrote postcards, sent text message follow ups, and worked to perfect a multi-faceted contact program that created the same personal feeling as a door knock.
At all levels, C3’s team worked hard to get through the challenges that the Coronavirus brought and worked even harder to get ahead of it. So that if it ever came to that point again, we would be prepared to work through the changes. Our team was determined to enhance our operations by providing the same stand-up quality of service we offer to all of our clients. It required flexibility and dedication from everyone on this team to aid us through the hurdles. If COVID-19 taught our team anything, it’s that teamwork and collaboration really is necessary to excel in the quality of what we have to offer and what sets us apart from the rest.
