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Settling into Week 6 of @twilio's COVID response, thinking about how much has changed, and how quickly it's changed. But as leaders, the process to manage through change can be constant. I wanted to share how we've responded to the onset of COVID. First some context… [Thread]
On Monday March 9th, I began a customer roadshow with one of my board members. That day, we were visiting execs at a large Wall Street bank. (That was the day the Dow lost 12%, yet there was a sense of calm.)
On Tuesday, we announced the closure of all Twilio offices globally, but we were still debating what's "essential travel." On Wednesday, the NBA shut down, and most international flights were canceling.
On Thursday, March 12th, I ended the day meeting with the CEO of a major airline who's a customer of ours. The reality of what was coming had just started to hit us, but he was already there.
That was when we started to rewrite our playbook. On the flight home, I started drafting a COVID response BPM. What's a BPM you ask?
At @twilio, we call our internal planning process “BPM” - Big Picture, Priorities, Measures. BPMs are how we articulate our plan for the year. We also create them in special circumstances—an acquisition, product launch, and as it turns out, a global pandemic.
After my trip, the Twilio ETeam got together and created our BPM for Twilio’s response to COVID-19. We recognized that this was going to fundamentally change our business, the way we run it, and the way we take care of our employees and our customers.
Note: In the BPM process order is everything. The process only works if you ruthlessly prioritize, which is why the big picture leads with employees. If we don’t take care of employees, everything else will fail. The priorities are also in priority order:
Priority #1-Employee trust and welfare. Ensure we communicate well with employees, both in our outreach, and also in listening. Ensure we first and foremost are looking out for the personal welfare of our employees, and make them feel heard.
Priority #2 - Customer success through the crisis. Serve our customers during this crisis to help ensure their success, contributing to their ability to survive and thrive, thus building loyalty.
Priority #3- Recover stronger. Leverage Twilio's strong balance sheet to grow the business in an environment where others may be fearful.
Priority #4 - Capture emerging opportunities. Reach new customers and new use-cases in a trusted and scalable way, approach emerging needs for Twilio with the required urgency and build long term relationships.
Priority #5 - Community. Care for our communities during this crisis, showing up as a force of compassion and good.
I’ve talked to a lot of employees the past few weeks and nearly every conversation starts off with a 5 minute round robin of how we’re feeling. The second part of every meeting inevitably transitions into “did you hear what X customer built!?
Twilions are all feeling a sense of amazement at the sheer speed and scale of what is being built in response to the epidemic. COVID-19 has forced companies to reconfigure overnight for a socially-distanced reality that requires digital. A few of my favorites:
. @MountSinaiNYC has seen a 10X increase in activity on their text-to-chat platform that checks symptoms via text and escalates high risk patients to video - allowing Mount Sinai to provide personalized, remote care during COVID-19. Text 4-74624 (4-SINAI) if you need help!
. @deray and @bobakemamian, built a #WhileAtHome 
hotline in 3 days to answer COVID-related questions and connect them with a nearby testing site. https://whileathome.org
hotline in 3 days to answer COVID-related questions and connect them with a nearby testing site. https://whileathome.org
. @CrisisTextLine connects those in crisis with trained crisis counselors via text and saw a 116% increase in inbound traffic from people in need.
. @CityHarvest provides NYCers with emergency food relief. They've seen a 474% increase in communication with partners by using Plentiful, an SMS reservation system to make sure clients are getting food safely, made in partnership with @unitedwaynyc. Incredible.
Match launched a new feature on their dating apps so that people can live video chat during quarantine even if they can’t meet for in person dates.
. @QVCITALIA deployed Twilio Flex to immediately allow their customer service reps to continue to work remotely and serve customers while the country is on lockdown. They even rolled out new channels - WhatsApp and SMS to make it easier to get in touch.
. @dougmckenzie is an amazing magician who uses Twilio in his magic. He just launched http://AlakaZoom.net together with @ryanoakes to host virtual magic shows using phones, texts and digital imagery during COVID (trust me - these two are amazing).
Forget digital transformation, COVID-19 has ushered in an entirely new era. I think we’ll look back at 2020 as the year of Digital Acceleration: Industries who were on the cusp of digital have been activated into making this transition overnight.
The goal at @twilio is to come out of this situation as a stronger company—better products, deeper relationships with our customers and an even more empathetic culture.
These are extremely challenging times, but times like this also offer the biggest opportunity to come together and help each other. Drop us a note if we can help you. We can’t wait to see what you build. https://www.twilio.com/covid
