In an article written by Amanda David in Customer Think, she outlines the outcomes of altering and aligning strategy to the new threats and opportunities that COVID has presented. It is an article well worth a read, and I have attached the link to this article. However here are some highlights that are worth remembering.
Customers and employees have long memories and how we behave today (with COVID and post COVID) will live forever in the memories of our customers, our employees and their friends and family.
Hearing about CEOs taking home $24million a year only to remove sick pay for employees during COVID does not seem like the right thing to do.
Accepting orders and then refunding the price of the goods but not the postage and deliver and foreign exchange fees is not great customer experience.
Charging people for services and solutions when you cannot deliver is not a great customer experience.
Being out of stock with products that customers need and then increasing the price substantially when its back in stock -not a great customer experience.
Customer Strategy: Gestures of Consideration
Consideration
Addressing fear:
Missing the mark
Don’t expect everything to go straight back to ‘normal’
A prolonged break from the norm, and a period with this new ‘normal, may mean that we never go back how things were before Covid-19.
People have noticed positive changes during the lockdown — cleaner air, stronger communities, a quieter pace and pleasure in the simple/small things. In a YouGov UK survey, 54% of British consumers have said that they hope they will make some changes in their own lives.
Even more staggering, is that only 9% of Britons want life to return to ‘normal’ once lockdown is over according to the same poll.
Strategic alignment needed.
According to a Marketing Week survey of 477 UK brand marketers, 29% say their approach is to ‘stay the course’ by maintaining budgets and 50% say they are making cuts so they can ‘live to fight another day’ during the coronavirus pandemic.
Only 7% of UK marketers say that they are taking a strategic and ‘seize the opportunity’ approaches and investing more in marketing.