The Coronavirus pandemic is ongoing at time of writing. For all of our readers we offer you our thoughts and best wishes for good health for you, your family and loved ones.

I wanted to give some quick thoughts on preserving good customer experience during this time.

Keep focused on your customers not your business

Whilst you might be internally focusing on keeping your business running and keeping your employees safe and well, this shouldn't be your outward messaging to your customers. Approach your communications from your customers’ perspective and aim to connect with your customers on an emotional level wherever possible. That said you only need to communicate with your customers when you need to. There have been a whole host of companies giving updates at the moment. Some of these are of course important to customers, particularly from more essential services and food suppliers and supermarkets.

Remember that just because every other company is sending out an update it doesn't mean that you need to! You might also find that different channels are better to get your message across - whether email, website, social media or on your telephone contact centre.

Remember current experience may drive change

A customer’s interaction with your company can trigger their sense of trust and loyalty in your brand. There is the opportunity (albeit this needs to be handled discreetly) for your leaders to position themselves at the forefront of the longer-term shifts that might arise in consumer behavior following the coronavirus crisis. Bear in mind that demand patterns have shifted.

For example customers who are shopping online for the first time and may continue this behaviour once they are able to move on from lockdown. Customers are currently focused on digital, at-home, and low-touch experiences and interactions. They are having to consider how to safely receive goods and services and using services in a remote way that they would have previously have done in person. This ranges from watching theatre, accessing workout videos, learning new skills through to more essential services like doctor's appointments.

Be aware of your employee experience

With a large percentage of your workforce probably working from home, loneliness is inevotable. Your staff are having to adjust to new ways of meeting your customer's needs. They might be using new technologies to give support remotely. They might be juggling personal and work priorities and need greater flexibility. They are likely to have a whole range of issues and concerns. They might be dealing with more stressed and anxious customers or putting in extra hours to get orders fulfilled. One of the best things you can do right now is to see what you can do to help your staff so that they are best positioned to give customers the best possible experience in return.

Build enduring service capability

With online usage changing you have a unique opportunity to gain more real-time feedback from customers who may be interacting with you online in a way they haven't previously. You may also need to accelerate time to market for new customer experiences, for example using new technologies to reach out and connect with your customers. You will need to be flexible in prototyping and releasing innovations. You will also benefit from building an enduring service capability - in particular learning from what is working at this time of crisis and laying the foundations for your service experience when greater normality returns.

What to do next?

We'll keep writing blogs on topics that concern field service and operations during this critical time. Leadent Digital loves developing apps that transform customer experience and help you deliver a more frictionless service experience across all of your contact points and channels. Why not get in touch to find out how we can help at this critical time.