In this extraordinary period of time, it has never been more important to address the fears of consumers who are literally locked in and worried about everyone they interact with.
There is no longer ‘business as usual.’ Customer awareness, concern, and reaction to COVID-19 is rapidly shifting expectations and needs.
Confinement is rapidly altering consumer expectations, activities, and motivations, this will impact the customer perception of different brands in different ways. Keep in mind you have an opportunity to excel (or fail) because customer expectations are high now with so much emotion and uncertainty.
The delivery of service and products has changed
Everyone is brainstorming isolated customer scenarios to build a customer-centric approach in the face of COVID-19.
Attitudes and perceptions will change very rapidly, so it will be essential to establish real-time feedback and reporting. People who were not taking the virus seriously a week ago are doing so today. Simply put, month-old data on customer attitudes and perceptions of your service may as well be decade-old data. Have full visibility of your mobile workers to keep abreast of changes that may occur day-to-day in the coming weeks and months.
Where your brand depends on real-world delivery of products and services plan...
→ How you will serve customers if those are curtailed?
→Will you need to implement testing or provide masks to customers?
→How will you deal with customers who exhibit symptoms? Must your employees in every location understand and interact with local health officials?
→How can you use communications to support people who are quarantined? Can you shift to contactless digital delivery of field services?
Answers to these questions are not easy since they involve issues of product, logistics, inventory, supply chain, and operations. These questions are not only relevant for brands in the most immediately affected categories, like health products and travel. These questions can and will impact your customers and your brands in the coming months.
Resources are shifting as companies change their focus from solving broken touchpoints to addressing distinct and urgent customer needs and flexing to address severe operational, manufacturing, or logistics issues. Under normal conditions, CX leaders fight to secure and keep resources, but in the coming months, their ability to use customer insight to inform urgent decisions and support shifts in priorities will be more important than maintaining a steady course.
“In this extraordinary period of time, it has never been more important to address the fears of consumers who are literally locked in and worried about everyone they interact with. Reassuring them with frequent communication so they know exactly who to expect, the steps you’ve taken to keep them safe, precisely when you’ll arrive and enabling them to communicate their precise instructions for access is not just important, it’s vital. Without this, you may well find you’re locked out.”
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