Source: Forbes Technology Council

COVID-19 has affected every organization and individual on the planet. Many organizations have closed their physical doors, making their digital channels the primary way for customers to engage and make purchases. Even businesses that have continued to operate physical locations have had to rethink how they integrate their in-person and digital experiences to seamlessly engage with customers. It’s an incredibly difficult time, compounded by the fact there's so much uncertainty around when the new normal will emerge.

While it’s sensible for businesses to concentrate on how they will continue to operate and support customers, some organizations should also focus on the opportunity. I understand this isn’t possible for all industries, as many businesses that rely on in-person interactions — including airlines, theatres and hotels — face unique challenges during this crisis.

But as COVID-19 accelerates the global move to digital, certain companies can quickly optimize their digital interactions to solidify their customer base. These organizations have an opportunity to reinvent their digital operations by making digital their primary channel from now on.

 

Unprecedented times, unprecedented changes

One change seen over the past few weeks has been a major increase in e-commerce. As of April 26, both online-only and brick-and-mortar retailers saw online orders increase significantly. For example, brands that mainly trade in physical stores saw a 197% growth in digital sales compared to the same two-week period last year. Online ordering and contactless delivery have also become important for both consumers and businesses. In fact, we’ve seen some of our business-to-business clients’ sales via digital channels increase by more than 1,000%.

 

 

Stepping back, it’s easy to see how COVID-19 is reshaping buying behaviors and customer interactions. When we emerge in a new normal, these changes may leave an indelible mark and will have accelerated digital transformations across all businesses. Organizations will have jumped over many of the hurdles associated with digital transformation simply because they had no other choice.

Customers are also judging their digital interactions against their other digital experiences. Is dealing with you as easy as streaming music, buying online, mobile banking or hosting a virtual meeting?

Customers will actively choose interactions that most meet their experience expectations, regardless of a business’ size or location. Digital behaviors won’t go back to what they were before. As a result, companies that use this time to expand, explore and experiment with their digital experience could be well positioned to not only emerge from COVID-19 stronger, but be ready to take advantage of these new customer behaviors.

Enhancing the digital experience: Go for speed, and iterate

To make the most of the acceleration of digital demands, organizations need to move quickly. If customers walk away due to challenging experiences during the crisis, they may never return.

Here’s what we encourage you focus on:

1. Optimize right now: Take a scan of your critical customer interactions and employee tasks, and assess their effectiveness given current challenges. Use this scan to identify quick wins for how to improve the efficiency of your digital channels given the changing needs of your customers. This change should be done within weeks. As Forbes, citing a Forrester report, has previously noted, improving the customer experience can increase conversion rates between 200% and 400%.

2. Redefine your future customer experience: Use any increase in digital interactions, touch points and purchasing to redefine your experience. This isn’t about optimization. It’s about radically improving your digital experience to change customers’ expectations. To do this right, you need to provide amazing experiences that align with your brand while also driving revenue and/or reducing costs. You also need a balance of qualitative and quantitative information, so make sure you understand the data you have available, how you’re collecting it and how you’re using it to adjust all aspects of your business (front and back office).

3. Keep your customer relationships for the long term: Recognizing that customers will be accustomed to the power of interacting with you digitally, make sure you have the ability to keep them while encouraging them to continue using digital as their primary channel. This is where you can also use artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies to help anticipate and deliver suggested actions to customers using the data you collect.

4. Use ROX to focus on what you should do: Given the current situation, you need to prioritize what you should do to drive revenue or reduce costs. Every dollar has to count. This means you need to look beyond simply addressing customer and employee pain points by prioritizing your spend based on the return on experience (ROX) you will receive.

Ready for the future

In these unprecedented times, customers’ behaviors are changing and digital transformation is being accelerated at a pace we haven’t seen before. Companies that move quickly to enhance their digital customer experiences to better respond to the current challenges will be well positioned to maintain their existing relationships, as well as gain new customers and grow their share.

At the same time, companies that act now will be better able to experiment with, measure and adjust their digital activities quickly due to the rapid acceleration of digital engagement. This means that companies could emerge from COVID-19 fully optimized and ready to succeed.