Reshape 20: Reflections

 Insider’s recently held virtual summit #RESHAPE 20 was definitely one for the digital ecosystem books! Nearly 2000 attendees and 93 highly cerebral and motivated speakers from all across the globe ( 90 countries) came together to find and discuss the roles each one could play to help #RESHAPE a better world!  While the experience was overwhelming and any attempt to write it down would not do justice to the amount of learning we had! Yet, the following 9 takeaways are yet my humble attempt at doing just that! : 

1. Reshape Alliance: The coming days and months will see a significant rise in strategic partnerships, more than they ever did. Business partnerships will continue but ecosystem partnerships will gain traction as businesses and brands re-evaluate, In fact, in certain cases, some may relook at their business upside down. Customers would associate themselves strongly with such ‘ecosystem aggregation’ brands.

2. Reshape Agility: At the onset of Covid-19, we saw businesses adopt ‘Reactive Agility’ – brands that were hitherto cold-shouldering digital transformation, immediately made the jump.  However, just doing this will not fuel customer relationships and business growth. ‘Responsive Agility’ aka ‘Innovation’ is the way forward and CX is more than just product/service delivery. 

3. Reshape Experimentation:  As customers are coming in terms with the ‘new normal’, buying behavior would undergo capricious changes over shorter periods of time, heralding the era of a ‘Multi-persona’ consumer.  Experimenting with different digital approaches for customer engagement, pricing, and service models will determine customer loyalty and in turn business growth. Are brands ready to experiment fast and fail faster only to get up stronger?

4. Reshape Intelligence: Brands would need to invest in AI to get better at connecting, messaging, and communicating with the right segments at the right time leading to deeper relationships and better return on digital investments. The pandemic being a black swan event, data mining and forecasting would be more based on recent behavior than historical behavior.  The switch from ‘Big Data’ to ‘Right Data, has to happen, now!

5. Reshape Consumer Experience: Businesses and brands will need to start re-evaluating Customer Experience in terms of its impact on bottom line and revenues. Customer buying behavior will be a mix of both online and offline purchases.  While physical shopping experiences would need to be tuned to health and safety, online experiences would require standardization across digital platforms. Against this background, Customer Experience, I strongly believe, is the New Brand.

6.  Reshape Learning: The ‘new normal’ that businesses and brands are moving towards is unclear and chaotic. While managing change is the way to soldier on, learning from experiences will also assume importance. Increasing customer awareness and maturity around embracing digitization will make learning more compelling for brands.

7. Reshape Empathy: Whether it is going ‘glocal’ as a strategy to nurture local business environments or addressing customer concerns about health and safety, customers will want to see ‘Brands with a conscience’ go beyond mere words. As consumers become more digitally aware, they would want brands to put health and safety (personal and data safety) on the top of their agenda and see the same communicated through timely and accurate messaging.

8. Reshape Employee Compassion: CXO’s would need to increasingly start leading from the front to help their teams manage their mental and physical well-being. Leadership teams will face intense security by customers on how humane they are.Personal reach out, by leaders, to communicate how they are building empathy into their business DNA will be a basic expectation from customers, suppliers, partners, and partners alike.

9. Reshape Corporate Citizenship: Good leadership is all about authenticity, building trust, being humble, and taking risks. Brands that look at businesses holistically and build agility in business processes, innovation in reaching out to customers, empathy in managing stakeholder relationships are the ones that would be seen as role models.

Someday in the future, COVID-19 and its aftermath will be written up in a single paragraph but today every minute is a book in itself as our social and economic lives are being reshaped beyond recognition. The silver lining? Endless possibilities and opportunities.  Together, we can collaborate and co-create a ‘new normal’ that blends conscience with commerce. Helen Keller’s words never made more sense. “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”.

Are we ready to seize the opportunity?

Do share your thoughts and comments and I will include them with credits in my next article. As Global Head - Strategic Alliances @Insider, I am responsible for driving our global technology and solution partnerships and can be reached at [email protected]