Your experiences during the pandemic will not be televised but they will be Tweeted

I have written and deleted this blog post 4 times over the past few days thinking that I don’t want to be accused of trying to capitalize on Coronavirus / COVID-19.

But it has come up in a bunch of calls and is worth calling out that truly great, deep and sustainable relationships and loyalty are NEVER forged in times of joy and abundance THEY ARE ALWAYS forged in time of trouble.

These times of trouble also provide huge opportunities to capture new customers from your competitors, not by deceptive marketing or crazy offers but by doing a great job of treating your customers well, especially treating your customers so well they say nice things about you to others.

And talking about sayng things to others remember when you think about COVID-19 today and compare it to SARS in 2003, Swine Flu in 2009 and MERS in 2012 this is the first major global medical threat which has occurred since the obsessive use of the smartphone (iPhone launch 2008) combined with widespread and obsessive use of social media ..

So, what you do is going to be talked about .. gret or not so great .. to paraphrase Gil Scott Heron “your experiences during this COVID-19 pandemic will not be televised but they will be Tweeted”

The overall message is now isn’t the time to back away from your CX investments but time to double down on them.

Here are 6 different industry scenario questions that have come up in the past week where you may want to think about the customers’ perception of the experience. And what are yours?

1. People want someone to reassure them because they are panicking or worried because the stock market is acting like a roller coaster and their monthly retirement income just got slashed by 20% .. and they think the investment manager is more interested in their bonus than the customers portfolio .. when they can connect with one. What are you doing to address this?
2. Your most valued customer can’t find the product they want in the store or online because of panic buying, get treated like every normal customer in store, on the phone and online, can’t find it in your competitors stores either but get a text when that new company associate locates one. What are you doing to address this?
3. When their dream, once in a lifetime 2019 Easter family vacation to Italy isn’t happening because of a national COVID-19 shutdown and they don’t want their airfare and hotel credited, they want their money back, now because they are going to need the money because their job put them on short time work. What are you doing to address this?
4. When you reschedule or defer your conference to later this year but the attendee is not available or doesn’t want to go and they need their money back. For your conference, for their airfare, for the hotel, some say yes, some say no you can just have a credit. Its your conference and your problem. What are you doing to address this?
5. When your member wants to get information about their life, travel or health insurance and their posture on COVID-19 related coverage but your call center is overloaded, you don’t have chat capability and you haven’t informed your agents of your policy so all they can do is commiserate. What are you doing to address this?
6. When you need to tell your people to work from home, but you haven’t equipped them with the tools. And even if they do have them most of your employees (especially senior leaders) have no idea how to function in a ‘digital virtual’ way of working. What are you doing to address this?

And finally, if you aren’t prepared for this one at least do you have an experience plan for whenever the next one comes along? How are you gong to enhance listening deeply to your customers and employees and making sure you change your business practices. For winter 202 when COVID-19 will be COVID-20, hopefully weaker and with inoculations available but definitely coming.