This pandemic has changed the way we serve our customers for ever; or has it?

Is that the sound of the end of the night out at the movies? Will any of us ever dare dream of heading to the gym again? Listening to the doom and gloom in this unprecedented time would have us believe that we are witnessing the end of any type of physical engagement with products or services?

The question is that whilst at this moment, customer experience might be suspended do you care enough to start transforming your customers now so that you don’t disconnect in this period of hiatus?

Sometime in recent years, it became the height of modernity to have strangers sleep in your bed when you weren’t there or to sit next to you as you drove from one city to another. It felt futuristic to mention that the gym you went to was because you had a membership that allowed you to go anywhere, anytime. It was cool to catch a movie with your partner, order the meal online, and be wined and dined in-front of the big screen. This movement was called the sharing economy and it relied upon certain widely held assumptions, such as that it is fine to be near other people and that it is alright to touch what they have touched what they touched, it was also enabled by clever technology and customer experience strategies.

In this age of pandemic anxiety, these assumptions have all but evaporated. The sharing or peer-to-peer, economy was meant to represent the commerce of the future, the perfect fusion of technology and reality. That destiny now looks shaky at best. What will happen to Fitness First, to the Gold class movie experience, dating apps? What will become of the start-ups enabling us to monetise our health, our travel, our spare time? And, beyond the brands themselves, what will happen to the people who were making some or all of their income from these platforms?

Is life as we know it, over?

Given we have moved beyond bunkering in to wondering what we should do to safeguard tomorrow?

The immediate future for most businesses will surely involve some kind of grey area between house arrest and a version of pre-pandemic freedom. Lockdowns and physical distancing will be escalated and de-escalated by the government like the gears in a car.

Some businesses might suffer greatly in full lockdown but then thrive when movement is even slightly freer if they chose to face into their reality now and see this as an opportunity to improve or transform to tomorrow. I believe that when we open up, demand will be robust because people will be overjoyed to be liberated and if they can afford it, will indulge.

Most expect there to be a post-pandemic behavioural shift. We can expect for example that there will be a new normal around physical distancing. Employees I’m certain will be eager to return to work, but there will need to be a rethink of the workplace and of engagement to incorporate working from home and working from the office.

We will most certainly go back to the gym, maybe even venture out to dinner or to the movies but that too will be different, it will be defined by a new normal one that business must create and start engaging their customers on today. It will be defined by those who have a clear strategy for speaking to their customers now, sharing with them their thoughts and listening to the hopes and dreams of those they serve.

In order to assess the future of your business, it’s worth reflecting on the customers you serve and what might change for them?

The truth is that the future is likely to change in terms of the way we engage, our customers' priorities might shift or their needs may be slightly different?

Make no mistake, the value shift towards an even more customer-centric and social consciousness will only continue – and part of that is a big vote for the value your organisation places on the customer versus your own needs. The idea that this is the way we’ve done and it’s the way we’ll always do it was radically shifted forever when we pivoted to the sharing economy. Who would have ever dreamed that I could book my car as I was having my coffee and not worry about trying to hail a cab? By providing customers with communications and strategies on how your organisation intends to serve their needs post this pandemic is something you should be working on now.

It’s always been about the customer right, that’s what we all tell ourselves, and now that in some industries we are in a position that we can’t serve them we’ve stopped leveraging the time we have to continue talking to them or have we?

Whatever happens with this pandemic, however long it takes to get to a better place, the sheer force of the technologies that are available to everyone will ensure that those who have a clear line of sight of their customers will most definitely be ready to go again.

It’s conceivable that the new world order may be different, however, be clear that most of the underlying principles around customer experience will remain the same.

If nothing else, make this the moment that belongs to someone else, the customers you serve?

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Business Strategy, COVID, Pandemic, Technology