A message from Meghan Lublin, Sunrise SVP of Marketing & Communications, regarding Sunrise's response to COVID-19:
At Sunrise, we know our brand and all that it stands for is defined by our customers’ experience. While I always say that I’d like to take credit for building the best brand in the industry, we really have our community team members to thank for creating a world-class customer experience. You are the ones interacting and making personal connections with our residents every day, understanding and supporting their unique wants and needs, hobbies and passions, likes and dislikes. You create a truly personalized experience that I believe our residents and families cherish at Sunrise. These team members help make each Sunrise community a home for all who live there.
For nearly 40 years, by listening to those we serve, we have adapted and expanded our services, always looking for opportunities to improve and innovate. And, during this unprecedented health crisis, it is now more important than ever that we further evolve to better understand and respond to our customers’ needs.
Throughout all the changes, a consistent theme has endured. Our customers appreciate frequent, transparent and personalized communications. To build and maintain their trust, we continue to work to keep them informed on community happenings and provide regular opportunities for them to engage with our team members. Building and maintaining strong relationships with community team members is incredibly important, and effective communications is core to our customer experience and something we focus on each and every day. And, as we were faced with the rise of the pandemic, we knew it was important to continue to communicate with our customers, even if it had to look a bit different.
In recent weeks, we have increased communications to our families from community leaders, and others across our organization. We’ve focused in tandem on measures to protect the health and wellbeing of our residents and team members, while also trying to make sure our families understand the steps we’re taking to help keep their loved ones safe. We recognize that many of the infection control measures we’ve implemented have changed familiar routines like weekly family visits, family nights and community-wide celebrations, so we’ve looked for new ways to involve loved ones in the day-to-day activities and making of memories that continue, despite social distancing.
In a world where face-to-face interaction is limited, we strive to maintain this strong connection with our residents’ families, providing them with peace of mind by reinforcing that we continue to deliver high-quality, customized care and support to our residents. We are facilitating virtual visits though iPads in all of our communities to help ensure our residents can enjoy FaceTime and Skype with those most important to them. Once again, it is our special teams who are creatively leveraging technology in new ways to help maintain these close connections. These iPads also help support telehealth appointments between our residents and care providers. We’re also piloting new technology platforms and programs to foster even more communication with our families.
In addition to updates on community happenings, we know the constant stream of news stories about the elderly’s susceptibility to this horrible virus is overwhelming and leads many of our families to wonder how COVID-19 will affect their loved one. For this reason, we are focused on communicating real-time directly and transparently with any family who has been impacted. We are also proactively providing updates to all families in a community where there is a COVID-19 diagnosis, and we’re doing so in a way that balances the information they need to make decisions about their loved one’s care, with our need to protect the privacy of all those involved. We are also soliciting feedback from our customers and finding new ways to improve individual experiences and help our residents feel more comfortable, engaged and supported, especially during these uncertain times.
In the coming weeks and months, we will all continue to adjust to our “new normal” while not losing sight of who we are and delivering on the personalized customer experience that defines us. Whatever the future holds, you can rest assured that we are focused on always enhancing family communications and providing customers with new ways to share feedback. The world may look very different, but our commitment to champion the lives of all seniors, including the ones you love most, endures.