Are you Redefining your Customer Relationships during Covid 19?
It is a given that a relationship is born, nurtured and often lost based on human emotions. Your relationship and retention of your customers will reflect the emotional stretch and engagement that your culture personifies. The food that sustains the relationship is essentially every single, small, medium and large touch point that a customer has with your brand in current time.
Right now your customer has very different needs to those of 8 weeks ago. A lot of them will craving comfort, connection and freedom to move and live as they please. The stats tell us that prior to Covid 19 (*) , 59% of customers globally preferred to engage with a human being instead of a machine…… I have to wonder what the new stats will look like. I believe it will be safe to assume that the number will have risen.
Being moved into an online world where there are no opportunities for a person’s senses to engage – no feeling the fabric, smelling the fragrance, no clear appreciation for the touch of a shape or bottle, the taste between different blends – with no choice in the matter combined with limited or zero access to family, friends and colleagues will have created a deep desire for human connection. It could be referred to as emotional starvation.
With all this change businesses have to adapt, if for no other reason than to understand their customer’s new space. A space that might be here for an extended period or a short period. Right now it is not clear. What is clear is that customers are human beings and have a need is to be seen and understood. They are hyper sensitive to both what you are saying and how you are saying it. Are you selling (with zero empathy) a product that is meaningless just to make a sales target, or are you engaging with value sharing a product that will help them solve a pain point right now.
Do you care? Have you found solutions to retain your customers keeping in mind that your actions of the Covid19 pandemic will probably influence how your brand is perceived post the pandemic. It will define customer's loyalty and retention.
The Covid19 pandemic whilst massively challenging for many and beneficial for others has pulled the global community together on a scale that no living person has experienced. Everyone has become more human, learnt to appreciate the basics and miss what we previously took for granted – human connection that was self propelled.
Understanding this playing field and responding appropriately, putting people first (before our bottom lines) will ensure that our futures are paved with customers who have chosen to stay for the right reasons with the right brands.
(*) Source PWC Global Survey
