Post-Covid: making the customer experience a performance lever
After over a year of the current health crisis, what lessons can we learn about customer experience and relationships, and how can they be leveraged for future performance?
In an increasingly competitive business environment, retaining current customers and attracting new ones is a central concern for all companies. Their efforts are usually focused on marketing and sales strategies, but customer strategies are also essential, especially in a volatile economic environment.
How should brands approach the ‘post-Covid’ context to best meet the expectations of their current and prospective customers? To make the customer experience a real performance lever in this regard, they can learn from the changes brought about by the health crisis and focus on several priorities: reassessing and digitalizing their strategies.
Reassessing the customer experience through its integration into business strategies
The health crisis has made the customer experience a growing concern for business development and brand image. Successful companies have been able to adapt their customer strategy to this context as quickly as possible.
Certain initiatives have proved particularly successful, with some surprising results: through its solidarity with its customers, MAIF outperformed Amazon as an inspiring customer experience company, demonstrating the growing importance of being proactive and anticipating needs to retain customers.
Changing customer expectations should be closely monitored. They provide a basis for building a coherent strategy that leads to revenue and loyalty. This can only be achieved through an internal desire to put customer experience issues first.
Though a driver behind certain companies’ success before the crisis, its strategic importance should be more widely recognized in a post-Covid context.
Many companies now plan to increase the resources they dedicate to the customer experience – an essential differentiation factor within an increasingly competitive environment. They owe it to themselves to focus their means and processes on their customers, giving them a voice in all strategic decisions. Strengthening their listening initiatives, investing in new technologies and using customer satisfaction analytics are effective actions and strategies to this end. Digitalizing across the board and simplifying customer pathways will also contribute to this efficiency.
Digitalizing for better support
Over the past year, we’ve experienced sharp acceleration in digitalization across multiple industries, something that has become a fact of life. Some brands had already begun digitalizing their processes, but the crisis has acted as a real catalyst. The demands of a largely virtual and remote environment have encouraged or indeed forced companies to massively redirect their customer services to digital spaces. Customer strategies have focused on maintaining personalized relationships to support the digitalization of these interactions.
Customer expectations have also shifted to digital channels and increased by 10 points in a year, compared to an average of 4 to 5 points in normal times. As a result, companies that have succeeded in communicating via their digital platforms and meeting these expectations have stood out from their competitors in their customers’ minds.
The shift and growth in digital usage expectations are now realities that companies must consider in the long run if they wish to retain their current customers and attract new ones.
The crisis has demonstrated the need to pay particular attention to the development and proper functioning of digital channels and platforms. Mastering this area is now a vital source of differentiation. The current performance of brands that had already initiated a digitalization dynamic before the crisis underscores the importance of accelerating digital development within companies.
Digitalizing customer pathways also goes hand in hand with their simplification: improved request resolution and easy access to information have become crucial in a context where customer advisers have been less reachable. Many companies that were slower to implement digital platforms have had to catch up quickly. The situation is now stabilizing, and companies have been able to learn from their mistakes. Their strategies must now focus on guaranteeing a quality digital experience, regardless of the context.
While we cannot be sure exactly what “post-Covid” life will bring, it’s clear that the changes to the customer experience observed during the health crisis are set to last. The crisis will have demonstrated the importance of a consistent, flexible and proactive customer strategy.
Taking stock of these insights and integrating them into business strategies will be one way of securing success. Even before the crisis, certain companies already considered the customer experience to be a potential performance lever. In a post-Covid context, all businesses will need to take this into account.
Article published by journaldunet.com, on june 23, 2021.