As businesses navigate their way out of the COVID-19 pandemic with incredible vaccine rollouts across the globe, this period allows for some much-needed hindsight. Many experts have been drawing comparisons between the effects of the coronavirus pandemic to the financial crash of 2008, which also derailed the economy in ways unimaginable. Whether those affected worked in retail or global banking, the impact of a 1.7% decrease in global output was devastating. Now, it is predicted global output amid the pandemic will fall 5.0% this year, possibly 7%. Whichever the figure, and the devastation caused, the behaviours of businesses remain strikingly similar.
A McKinsey study revealed the impact of resilience and investment plan in terms of shareholder value, with one interesting aspect of the data being the immediate impact of an innovation and investment strategy. While the point of the study remained long-term value, it found that the performance gap between those labelled ‘resilients’ and ‘nonresilients’ was significant, even as early the first year of the financial crisis.
A business recovery kit compiled by Calabrio, the leading workforce optimisation and analytics solutions company, reveals a COVID-19 recovery plan consisting of obstacles to overcome and how best to achieve this via pandemic-driven change. Let’s take a closer look at some of the key tips for surviving and thriving in the new world of work and consumerism.
Re-understanding Customers
Fully grasping your customers’ views of your organisation post-pandemic will act as the very foundation to accelerating full recovery. For many, this will be a case of re-understanding to help improve retention and potentially increase the economic value of each customer. This has the effect of reshaping the innovation process for business leaders as targets set for creating future offerings have shifted since March 2020. Whether that change is temporary or permanent, businesses need to understand it.
Kris McKenzie, the company’s SVP of International Sales, says that now, more than ever, it’s crucial companies listen to their customers and really understand their needs. He says:
“We’re all now having these digital experiences and freely giving away our personal information on where we live and the things we want to buy. In return for that, we as consumers expect these businesses to know exactly who we are.
“But with a lot of companies, it’s as if it’s the first time we’ve interacted despite the previous history we might have with them. A lot of customers who perhaps have given information to them again and again and again are left wondering ‘why am I doing this?’ especially when they’re paying good money to engage with that brand. This is making consumers go elsewhere where they have that instant customer recognition.”
Calabrio recommends a customer journey mapping tool to aid this, which works by helping businesses meet those all-important customer needs. The map will effectively inform key processes, such as innovation, pricing, messaging and omni-channel communications.
Winning a Slice of the Pie
A dramatic shift in the way consumers pick their brands is a behaviour that has since emerged from the pandemic, with availability, accessibility and digital experience being taken for granted at the start of the crisis. This has influenced brand evaluation and selection criteria. Brand relationships have adapted as customers develop affinities for those able to meet their demands, such as the timeliness of delivery and the ability to simplify online and mobile experiences. Consumers have consequently shifted away from long-time brand relationships. In the U.S. alone, more than 75% of consumers have altered their shopping behaviours and changed to new brands during the pandemic.
These new trends have created a huge landscape of customers available for pursuit. This is where rebranding comes in, McKenzie adds, using the example of restaurants to illustrate his point.
He explains:
"I’m in an investor forum so I get pitches from new start-ups, and many of them are innovative food businesses. Previously these businesses would have created physical spaces such as pop-ups, concessions or actual restaurants, but now they exploit our willingness to order online whilst harnessing the third party delivery infrastructure to get their product to market quicker and at scale.”
If your business model needs to adapt, so too must your brand. Adopting a brand messaging framework using analytics extracted from the contact centre is a tool to use. Purpose, brand story and values are details that for many, with the help of a revamp or recalibration, should be clearly articulated to build up trust.
A brand messaging framework can be the tool to aid businesses with winning a slice of the new consumerism pie. The brand’s story is one of the most important aspects of messaging to get across to the customer, along with the organisation’s purpose and values. This doesn’t have to be a complete revamp of the story, just a recalibration, and in doing this it allows a company to align who it is, what it does and why it matters.
Introducing the Brand Ambassador
Bringing a brand story to life is vital in the road to post-COVID recovery and the best way to activate this is to get agents talking about it. There is an overwhelming deluge of information passed onto consumers in the form of social media, newsletters and email which they simply will not read. It makes perfect sense to have those at the very core and frontline of the business discuss it.
Thus, the brand story template may well be the most important tool to provide agents. It comes with an ability to understand the meaning of the brand and how it stands to boost any customer experience (CX) engagement, McKenzie states.
But agents need to understand your brand story at a granular level to do this. It must be part of their thought process to achieve this, McKenzie says.