Business Agility in tough times — Customer Centricity (Part 2)
It has been validated through several reports that the Economic impact caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic is going to be like no other crisis the Industries have faced in the past several decades. While some Businesses are still struggling, some have been Agile enough to be able to respond efficiently. This multi-part series of articles provides insights into how Business Agility plays an important role in these tough times, how the market landscape is changing, and suggestions on the core areas of Business Agility in a neutral format not specific to Industry or Technology.
In Part 1 of this series, we looked at a few examples of how Organizations are responding to the challenging market conditions resulting from ongoing Pandemic and how Business Agility is helping these Organizations, as well as the three focus areas of Business Agility:
- Customer Centricity
- Business Continuity.
- Employee Focus
In this Part 2, we take a closer look at the first focus area in details— Customer Centricity.
Customer Centricity
Due to the ongoing crisis, Customer needs and behaviours have been impacted. Understanding the same and providing relevant business solutions to them is the need of the hour. Stores are closed due to wide-spread lock downs and other preventive measures imposed by administrative Authorities. At the same time, many businesses have come up to offer digital solutions or alter their services, even offering free services to respect and address immediate customer needs.
· Most tech companies have shifted to 100% (or maximum possible) work from home to ensure continuity of services to the Customers
· Many schools (my kid’s school in Gurugram, Haryana, India) are offering online classes to continue to provide education and cover the curriculum
· Google has offered it’s premium version of Hangouts for free as more and more people around the world have started to work from home needing collaboration tools
· Cisco has offered it’s Webex offering for free for a few weeks during these difficult times
· Some businesses have moved to provide their customer support online through chat and video calling
· As the situation is getting worse all across the world, Customers are getting more cautious of any potential infections. To respect this concern, Migrant Coffee, a café in Melbourne, has already started to accept orders on phone as well as home delivery services, or simply leave food/coffee outside the store for customer pick up.
As the Customer needs, behaviours and priorities are changing, here are a few pointers to align better with them and respond faster to provide relevant services:
- Amplify Customer outreach: Amplify your efforts to reach out to your Customers and understand their immediate needs. While Digital channels come handy here, depending on the type of Business, this could be done via 1–1 reach outs, mass mailing or through online campaigns. Many online shopping sites (Amazon, Flipkart etc.) are not delivering most Products due to lock down. However, they have revamped their supply chain to source in more products that the customer needs right now. This doesn’t just include essential items, but also additional curation of online content on Audio and Video.
Additionally, they have Analytics informing them what the Customers are searching for to create immediate and future demand/supply patterns. Search analytics for Bluetooth Headphones shows far lower ranking than it used to be. When will customers again want them?
- Rewire, Now!: There is no time for the regular detailed market analysis driven action planning. Although strategic roadmaps are required once the crisis is over or under control, be ready to rewire your resources and offerings that match better with the immediate Customer needs. Constantly review the same with internal response teams. Needless to say, the turn-around time required to do this is extremely short.
- Stay connected: Even if your services are suspended due to the nature of Business, stay connected with the Customers to keep them informed of when the services will resume. Convey your efforts towards fighting the Pandemic and the ways the Customers can contribute towards the larger cause in partnership with you. Continuous Customer Engagement is the key here. This is applicable not just for Customers, but suppliers, vendors, partners as well who play a critical role in delivering business services.
Most disruptions and innovations center around the customer. Customer behaviour and needs arising from this crisis will dominate how the businesses will evolve. In the next part of the series, (Part 3), we will take a closer look at the second focus area in details — Business Continuity.
