Whether this crisis lasts 4 weeks, 4 months or 4 years COVID-19 (also known as “the Coronavirus”) is changing everything Since March 1st, 2020 we have participated in 10 CX team client discussing challenges and actions and distilled those into 10 challenges and 10 actions.
There is justifiable panic and fear about COVID-19 and vigorous attempts to adjust business practices to prepare for the potential impacts on business and society and to react to the actual impacts we are seeing.
Between March 4th 2020 and March 18th 2020 through 10 COVID-19 related client discussions we distilled 10 business challenges and 10 related CX actions that may help inform your CX Program. First a European company discussing the impact on their business in Asia Pacific. Then with an Asian company discussing their business operations in North America. And the final 8 being US companies or US entities of global companies.
Every one of these companies is working to prioritize actions related to COVID-19 and trying to determine how important their CX investments and capabilities are in their overall priorities and which of the many CX capabilities they need to focus on in order to successfully respond.5 of the 10 companies have explicit statements that if handled correctly this provides an opportunity to create competitive advantage both in terms of brand identity and also in terms of practical customer loyalty and even volume of customers.
One useful takeaway is that there is a clear consensus on the most important CX area to focus on now which is Customer Listening, that is increasing your ability to hear your customers and your ability to respond to them. Hear and respond in their channel of choice in the time they need, a response mechanism that is truly demonstrating that today’s customer is “Digital First But Not Digital Only”. In this crisis they may love digital interaction but only until they need people interaction. And then you had better respond and provide that personal touch. But don’t force them to people when they don’t want to, especially if it adds time and stress to the interaction.
Anyhow we have been asked by several folks to document our observations so rather than keep typing emails we are packaging it in here and posting it.
Download it here and stay safe.