Who knows what will happen in the next days or weeks, but once this pandemic has passed, we will come out even more durable.
These days, teams even more use email, chat, and video apps to have meetings and exchange information from anywhere in the world. While coronavirus rages on, many of us were required to shift our work from offices to our homes. But the virus doesn’t attack only the way we work. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, companies may also face financial difficulty at this time. Businesses are losing customers, and workers are losing jobs. It has become terrifying and frustrating.
Some businesses have therefore decided to simplify the lives of people and offer them benefits to communicate more efficiently. They are helping with all the possible resources by bringing some extras at this difficult time.
To make your work-life easier, we came up with a list of companies, which offer their products and services for free or within generous perks for your business.
Zendesk considers its software as powerful and flexible and scales to meet the needs of any business. Currently, they put together a six-month complimentary Remote Support Bundle to help teams around the world keep up with changing customer demand due to COVID-19. This offer is available until June 30, 2020.
LiveAgent, a live chat, call center, and ticketing software, decided to help fight against COVID-19. They aim to support public institutions and hospitals by offering the system for free in these trying times. The key advantage of their product is that call center employees can answer all calls from the safety of their home.
Aircall is a flexible cloud phone solution for remote teams. To support companies, they are now offering additional flexibility to users, including one month free and tech support to help teams transition.
Google cloud is helping businesses and schools stay connected in response to Coronavirus for free until July 1. They are rolling out free access to their advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing capabilities to all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers globally including:
- Larger meetings, for up to 250 participants per call
- Live streaming for up to 100,000 viewers within a domain
- The ability to record meetings and save them to Google Drive
The chat app Slack just unveiled a redesign that comes with new features. Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield said the workplace chat company is now offering “free upgrades to paid plans” for teams working on coronavirus pandemic research, response, or mitigation. Also, nonprofit organizations of any size are eligible to receive three months of Standard or Plus plan for their workspace, completely free of charge.
Slido is an audience interaction tool for meetings, events, and classrooms. Their EDU plans are designed solely for teachers at primary, secondary, tertiary schools and universities. Slido has decided to provide a free upgrade for Teacher plan to all teachers, lecturers, and students globally until July 1, 2020.
Atlassian announced that small teams can now use Atlassian Cloud products (Jira Software, Confluence, Jira Service and Jira Core) at no charge, in addition to their existing free offerings for teams of all sizes. It’s a part of an effort to assist organizations whose employees are working remotely to help fight the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
Zoom has appeared as one of the most important tools in the fight to educate students and help businesses keep working as the outbreak of coronavirus empties classrooms and offices around the world. First, they provided its video conferencing tools to K-12 schools for free. Even tho they already have free accounts, Zoom went a bit further. The company removed the time limits from complementary accounts for users in regions affected by the outbreak. The company removed any limitations for public schools in Japan, Italy, and the U.S., with more countries being added.
The social networking world does not ignore the current situation. LinkedIn Learning made available 16 learning courses for free, including tips on how to: stay productive, build relationships when you’re not face-to-face, use virtual meeting tools (Zoom, Skype, BlueJeans, Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams), and balance family and work dynamics in a healthy way.
Hootsuite is offering free access to Professional plan to help affected small businesses ( restaurants, hotels, event venues, performing arts, etc.) and nonprofits stay connected to their customers and audiences. Plus, they will get access to a free library of social media training courses until July 1st, 2020.
As more people are working from home than ever before, Calendly teamed up with Zoom and GoToMeeting and these (previously) premium tier features are free of charge through June. They are also providing free premium plan access to teams working directly on COVID-19 pandemic research, response, or mitigation.
Conclusion
We know that these times are not easy especially if you are not used to working from your own home. However long this quarantine will last, we all should make the most out of it. Let’s all work more effectively, even if it does not include seeing our colleagues face-to-face daily.
Stay at home if you can, take care of each other and don’t forget to cheer up with a good book or a movie, after a long day of work. Who knows what will happen in the next days or weeks, but once this pandemic has passed, we will come out even more durable. And don’t forget about empathy. Now in support, it’s more valuable than ever before.
If you know any other businesses which came up with some extras during the outbreak, share them with us!