Over the past several weeks, I’ve spent some time talking to small businesses in my community and across the country. They’re struggling right now. But even in these unprecedented moments, I am hopeful as I witness people truly pulling together and supporting one another through this time.
Let me share an uplifting story about a community in Canada that’s helping its most vulnerable residents weather this storm.
In the small town of Halton Hills, just outside Toronto, a group of citizens has set up a phone hotline.
What’s special about this hotline, you ask? It connects at-risk residents—mostly seniors who are self-quarantining—with locals who want to help by bringing them groceries, medicine, and other essentials.
These Halton Hills volunteers didn’t have funding to get their community hotline up and running. So, they took advantage of RingCentral’s offer: three months of free phone service for organizations providing essential services during this pandemic.
It’s an amazing story, and it’s a reminder of how we’re all going to beat this thing. By working together.
Small organizations are among the most significantly affected by a major crisis like COVID-19, and we want to be able to support them.
Here are just a few ways to use RingCentral to keep your small business running, and your team and community healthy during these difficult times.
3 ways to use RingCentral—right now—to help your business and community through the COVID-19 challenge
1. Free cloud phone service for essential providers
As I mentioned earlier with the Halton Hills Community Hotline, RingCentral is offering three months of free cloud-phone service to providers of essential community services. That includes healthcare organizations, nonprofits of all types, and K-12 schools.
If your organization is delivering these types of services to your community, hit that link to start using RingCentral for free—we’re here to help.
2. Telemedicine solutions for patient care
You’ve been hearing the terms telemedicine and telehealth in the news a lot lately—and we’ve actually been enabling this service for the medical community for many years.
Essentially, telemedicine involves patients communicating through phone or video conferencing with their physicians and medical staff (instead of visiting doctors’ offices or hospitals in person).
You can understand why this is an essential way to provide care and protect the community during this viral pandemic.
But effective telemedicine requires more than doctors simply asking patients to call their office line for a consultation. For example, to maintain patient security and regulatory compliance, an effective telemedicine solution requires call recording and archiving as well electronic security measures to protect the confidentiality of the calls.
These are the types of phone and video solutions RingCentral has been successfully delivering for years—and is providing for the medical community right now during the coronavirus pandemic.
3. Work-from-home solutions for businesses
Finally, RingCentral has been a huge proponent of the distributed and remote work movements for many years, allowing employees that are scattered around the world to connect in real time by phone, team chat, and video conference.
Over the years, we’ve helped thousands of small business customers keep their operations running and their team’s morale up through a range of events—both good and bad.
For example, fuel distributor Vertrax is headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut—a region that’s hit often by snowstorms. Because they’re using RingCentral, Vertrax can allow its employees to work from home when a storm or other bad weather makes driving into the office difficult or dangerous.
As Vetrax’s system administrator Rob Ljunggren says, “Our support staff can log into their RingCentral call queue and take calls right from their computer.”
Let RingCentral help your small business
These are troubling and scary times. But we’re here to help you and your team stay connected and safe through this pandemic.
From taking advantage of our free offer for essential providers, to letting us guide you through setting up your telehealth system, to finding new ways to keep your operations up and running… we can help.
Get in touch with us today to chat about how RingCentral can help your small business weather the coronavirus storm.
Originally published Mar 31, 2020, updated Dec 30, 2022
