The global health crisis has a direct impact on socio-economic and public health policies. Businesses are forced to review their operations to avoid the spread of the virus. This implies new expenditures that no company had planned in its 2020 forecast budget. At the same time, the slowdown in the economy means for many a significant drop in turnover.

How can you get through the crisis by capitalizing on your customer experience?

In times of crisis, customers and consumers focus on what is most essential to them. For many it is safety, health and family. Your new customer communication should prioritize these three elements. Whether in marketing campaign, sales, customer service or collection, your communication must remain consistent.

Your communication must remain consistent.

To help your business get through these tough times, here are five tips you can apply right now to your customer experience program. If you do not yet have a customer experience program you can download our CXO’s Guide To Customer Experience Management.

The following tips can be applied for customer experience, patient experience, citizen experience and employee experience.

1. Reassure your employees

If you take care of your employees they will take care of your customers.

• Set a weekly internal communication on the actions that your company takes to protect its workforce.
• Execute the actions and share with transparency.
• Find the best way to reach out to all employees. For example, if you have a factory, opt for video communication on screens in the aisles of the factory rather than sending an email.
• Conduct periodic surveys to find out what your employees think and how they feel. Prefer open-ended questions to allow everyone to express themselves fully.
• Share protection tips against the virus with your employees.

2. Train your front-line employees

Once your employees are reassured by the company’s commitment to protect them, they can focus on your customer satisfaction. However, this is an unprecedented crisis for which no one has been prepared. It is therefore essential to train your teams so that they keep the communication consistent towards customers. Humanity, empathy and assistance are the three keywords. If you do not have the expertise to train staff on customer communication in times of crisis click here.

3. Get closer to your customers

The crisis offers a real opportunity to get closer to your customers by learning more from them and showing empathy. Keep your existing surveys and communications on hold during the crisis. Rather, spend more time listening to your customers. Make sure to use professional tools that make data collection and analysis easier.

4. Adapt your strategy

Be agile and adapt your strategy regularly based on what you learn from client surveys. The more dynamic you are in integrating the insights into your strategy, the more authentic you will appear to customers. The more authentic you appear, the more the customer trusts you and loves your brand. It is the purpose of managing customer experience.

5. Respond quickly to customer needs

The pandemic has forced many businesses to strengthen their digital strategy or create one from scratch to adapt to the “new normal”. Many businesses struggle to deal with the surge of requests that come via the digital channels (call center, email, social media). Unfortunately, as consumers are less patient in the digital world, it is important to build capacity and respond timely to their requests. It is a real challenge since many companies have their departments working in silos. Our team of experts can assist you to overcome the challenge.

We hope these tips will help you get through this difficult time. For more information, visit our COVID-19 page and discover our free solutions to keep you safe and help flatten the curve.