#customerrelationships #covid19 #infocentrehub

Undoubtedly, COVID-19 has rocked the economy. The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) World Economic Outlook predicts the cumulative loss to the world’s GDP from 2020 to 2021 will be approximately $9 trillion. That’s more than the combined economies of Germany and Japan.

But the crisis has disrupted more than global markets; it has changed peoples’ lives, needs, priorities and spending behaviors. Approximately 40 per cent of Australians are feeling financially insecure, and as a result, professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that household consumption will decline by $37.9 billion within the next year.

Customer-centricity is a term that has been used since the 1960s, but it has never been more relevant than in today’s business landscape. In such extreme environments, customers want more than the best offering or the lowest price; they seek dependability, confidence and trust in the brands they choose to do business with.

Here are three ways businesses can adapt to changing customer relationships, in light of COVID-19.

Let growth goals take a backseat

If growing your customer base is a priority for your business right now, take a moment to reflect on the long-term cost of that growth, both reputation-wise and financially, to determine whether it is a sustainable pathway.

Few businesses have been left untouched, if not unscathed, by COVID-19. Consequently, many companies have been forced to refocus their priorities, resources and goals to survive the crisis. If your business has not considered the immediate or future economic impact of the pandemic and how it could affect your organization, you need to start doing so now.

Part of evaluating this impact is looking at factors you can control, or at the very least maintain, to ensure you keep as close to ‘business as usual’ as possible. A central element of your survival strategy is maintaining your existing customer base.

Focusing on customer acquisition to the detriment of your existing ones can create a funnel effect, whereby a stream of new business comes in, while just as many customers go elsewhere. This can force companies into a spiral of deeper and deeper discounts to attract new consumers to their pool, which eventually runs dry along with their revenue streams.

Focus on operational excellence, but keep it customer-centric

Historically, a continuous improvement mindset revolved around things such as standardized costs, stable operations and meeting compliance expectations. While these are all critical elements of running a business, somewhere along the way, these companies lost their grip on the bigger picture and realized their product was no longer relevant to the customer.

Operational excellence is important, but carrying out a process 10 per cent better than the previous year does not matter if you miss the mark with your customer base.

More recently, businesses have started tapping into a different mindset that sees the customer experience translated throughout an end-to-end process. For truly customer-centric organizations, every decision and ambition has a customer-focused outcome in mind, be that improved experience or lasting sentiment.

Data-driven for precision

In a post-pandemic era, digital marketing and social communication channels are the name of the game, and when used correctly, can offer more specific insights into your customers’ behaviors.

Utilizing customer data can be as simple as surveying your existing customer base to gain actionable insights. The more data you have, the more accurate these insights will be.

Consider every digital touchpoint of your customers’ experiences as though they are leaving behind a fingerprint, containing a goldmine of DNA or data that helps you better understand their needs, expectations and concerns.

To develop a comprehensive customer excellence picture, it helps to combine each touchpoint into what is known as journey maps; a high-level, intuitively readable diagram that enables you to view the user experience from an outside-in perspective—across all your personas. The journey visualization will increasingly identify areas for persona-centric process improvement, while empowering business mapping, change, and operational transformation.