Customer Experience In Coronavirus Times

The collective shutdown of most of the world is continuing but with some measures to open up starting slowly. The novel coronavirus, Covid19, has brought life to a standstill across countries. Commerce is at a halt in many industries while others are showing record growth – online grocery for example. Amidst lockdowns, work from home directives, uncertainty and so many industries being hit hard, it is time to be prepared for the long haul. But this is not the time to stop thinking about your customers or to hibernate. It's the time to adapt.

You can't build a long term future on short term thinking.

Customer Experience remains as important as ever. In fact, this time can be used to reinvest funds, upskill teams and refocus on strategic efforts that typically get lost in the urgency of operational activities.

What areas can you focus on now to reap the benefits for the long term?

1. Digital Strategy: Given the increased amount of time that people are spending online, building the right digital strategy is as important as ever. If as a business you still don’t have an ecommerce strategy or you have one that has taken the backseat to physical commerce, this is the time to invest in it. Reaching your audience through digital channels also means re-examining changes in behaviour (how and when consumers are online) and re-thinking communication (BAU communication will not work for all categories). If you are a brick-and-mortar business, you can work to creating a seamless customer view of your offline and online channels so that when people return to public spaces, you have a better understanding of them. If you are an online business, you can focus your marketing on digital channels without splitting your budget to other channels.

2. Brand Building should not stop. Or it should start if it was mostly tactical earlier. Time needs to be spent on crafting brand messaging that highlights core values & demonstrates empathy. Not opportunism. Like this article by Mark Ritson suggests: "Keep the brand light burning, because the cost of snuffing it out for the rest of 2020 and then trying to reignite it next year is gigantic."

A Global Web Index study of 17 countries shows how people are responding to campaigns by brands. 80-90% of people approve of companies providing them with practical information on how to deal with the situation, how companies are helping their customers and of directly contacting customers (e.g. via email) to let them know what steps they are taking. Reassuring customers is a great step towards building the right brand. 

3. Content is critical. Talking about how your company is handling the situation, in terms of the welfare of customers and employees, is a good initiative. Being good to people will resonate with customers. As much as not being good will have negative effects. Nothing stays hidden. Social media listening can provide you immediate insights into what your customers are feeling right now.

Content can also build positivity. There is a downturn and the impact is massive. But people have more time, attention and want positivity to alleviate the harshness of distancing and quarantine. The same Global Web Index study shows that almost 80% of people approve of brands providing light-hearted videos or content to entertain them.

4. Build your Data Strategy which is usually difficult to do when running many campaigns and consistently optimising for performance. Understand how your first, second and third party data is currently structured, and what changes you need to make. Now that many companies have instituted Work From Home, it will be immediately visible to many companies what the challenges of remote access to data are for different teams. It is important to set a strategy in place improve the ways in which you acquire, store, manage, share and use data. Enabling data to flow across teams is important as is spending this time to improve data accuracy and security.

5. Redraw Customer Journeys: Understanding the change in customer journeys and reorienting their experience is important. Customer service teams are much more on the frontline right now. Are they able to work with other teams and manage customer requests without hindrance? If not, is technology holding you back or team structures? E-commerce is going to be key to the survival of many businesses. The time for digital transformation is now. Consumers maybe only shopping primarily for groceries and essentials right now, but as time goes on, other categories will see a change based on typical category behaviour.

6. User Experience: Change your UX to ensure that customers get the most important info right upfront or able to take the most common action right upfront. Don’t bury a change in hours of operation on an inside page for example. Think about what they immediately would look for and make it easy for them to find it. Using the same website homepage as earlier will not resonate when everyone’s mind is only on one thing. If you are a brick and mortar entity, your Location operational information should also be updated across all the relevant places such as Maps, Foursquare etc.

7. Change your orchestration and automation communication. I received a message from a gym. The first three words were "we miss you" with a link to their website or app to check their online workouts. Since all the gyms are closed officially, there's no relevance to "we miss you". A better message would have been about asking if you want to workout from home and suggesting a link to a set of workouts. Personalisation needs context, always. If you've switched, "shop in-store this weekend" to "shop online this weekend", it is still tone deaf. Instead you could talk about how you've made online delivery safer, specific items in stock that people might need right now etc.

8. Employee experience is critical to good customer experience. Businesses need to do more than just empathize. Ensuring the financial security, safety, and guidance to staff will go a long way. Frontline employees will have a much closer understanding of how your business is changing now and what’s the customer sentiment. Upskilling employees on remote working, omnichannel experiences, agile development is important. It gives them the ability to understand the rapidly changing environment and address the key pain points.

9. Any other CX goals that you had put off to later because tactical initiatives hogged budget and time should be re-evaluated and brought forward. Especially if it serves long term strategic purpose and some budget is available. For e.g. it could be the time to build that additional functionality that you thought didn't serve the goal of driving transactions previously, but does enable better experience. Rapid prototyping and deployment to fulfill changing customer needs around Work From Home, home delivery, remote working should be brought forward.

10. Of course, put Safety First when planning any change. Safety of teams and customers comes first.