eBusiness Weekly
Robert Gonye
The Covid-19 pandemic has taken the world by surprise. The cost of life is dire. The effects on global economies as well as people around the world are in quarantine or being asked to keep a social distance. As always, the world will emerge from this. There could hardly be many winners out of this but some will emerge stronger or less shattered than others.
As organisations emerge from this crisis, many are likely to face changing customer behaviour and attitudes. Some of these will be driven by 1) the organisations’ response to the crisis and others will be driven by 2) changing customer habits and attitudes.
It is in instances of trouble, problems and even more so — crisis, that the true nature and customer-centricity of organisations (and politicians) is shown. While, you can’t expect in times like these, an outstanding customer experience, Credit should be given to those who are constantly communicating with their customers.
As a business, your adoption rate on embracing new digital channels and allowing self-service as well as being flexible in difficult times, will cause a shift in behaviour on how your customers do business with you.
Marketers have long known that it is at a time of big changes that customer habits are up for grabs. These big changes typically occur when changing houses, having kids and going on holidays where things are not as we’re used to so we may try a new toothpaste, shampoo and who knows maybe even food. Will our behaviours shift significantly?
Safety cleanliness first
I remember once how customers were complaining about the cleanliness of hotel room lavatory’s even though they were being cleaned every day. The solution to the problem was not more cleaning but just using a detergent that was changing the colour of the water in the lavatory to blue so patients could notice the difference. Complaints dropped drastically overnight. So imagine if airlines stream live to passengers how the plane is being cleaned … who knows.
Certainly, masks are here to stay. Flexible bookings might also be in higher demand going forward and potentially a point for differentiation if they turn out to be an unmet need in the market.
People becoming wary of crowds
This is one of those shifts that may turn to be economically painful for many businesses. While restaurants (particularly local ones) might get full till the last available seat with people celebrating the end of social distancing and isolation, in the long term some theatres, stadiums, shopping malls, large retail stores, concerts, etc. may not see a full recovery of foot traffic to the pre-coronavirus era for a long time.
E-Commerce Habits
E-commerce, online streaming, online food delivery — all were growing rapidly for a number of years before the coronavirus even existed. But those were not universal for everything and everyone. Now they are grabbing not just new customers but penetrating more widely into new segments — whether millennials or baby-boomers. But now, for certain product categories, if people get used to it, it will become the new norm.
Digital everything — Digital transformation
Again, this was a long-term trend even before the virus outbreak but many organisations have realised how behind the curve they are and they are now prioritising and speeding up the provision of self-service channels. Digitisation will also speed up in Education and Healthcare.
Web meetings and Working From Home (WFH)
For many organisations, it also means changing how they work internally. As a popular Facebook meme goes — now you could see which meetings could easily have been e-mails, which could have avoided travel, etc. The Zoom Cloud Meetings app topped the charts of free apps in the App store last week while Google’s classrooms and Microsoft Teams were also in the top 6.
Another trend that had been going for some time was working from home but there had been many organisations that were absolutely reluctant to hear anything about it and yet, amidst the crisis and the quarantine period, scrambled to provide the means for employees to work from home.
Once the genie is out of the bottle there is no going back and companies might need to adopt more flexible policies going forward.
Digital on-demand and personalisation
In the face of movie theatre closures, multiple movie studios said that they’ll be making their first-run films available for home release. Films will be available to watch on-demand the same day they’re scheduled for theatrical release. Thinking about the future, this could turn out to be a trend that will allow personalisation and more interactive delivery of content.
Deliveries & driving
Another trend accelerated by COVID-19 has been towards cashless and contactless payments. Delivery drivers are now following instructions on where to leave the orders so to avoid any human contact. This shows that there is future demand for autonomous, driverless cars and many people might prefer that option.
So, if the digital experience becomes even more important, is your organization up to the task?
Finally, to truly understand human behaviour you need to look beyond the rational and into the emotional, subconscious and behavioural biases that drive our behaviour and perceptions. Most behavioural biases arise in the fast-thinking areas of the brain. The same that are responsible for our emotions. Emergency news coverage round-the-clock of the coronavirus pandemic triggers the emotion of fear and has put us into survival mode. Another cognitive bias in
So, to prepare for the changing customer behaviour, you need to look at what their unmet needs will be and go beyond the rational but into the emotional and consumer mind-set.
Robert Gonye is a Business Growth Expert and Influencer. He writes in his personal capacity. Comments and views: [email protected] The views given herein are solely for information purposes; they are guidelines and suggestions and are not guaranteed to work in any particular way.
