The COVID-19 pandemic is becoming a stark reality for brands, and we’re all suffering its effects. The fundamental elements that support brand trust are different now than even a month earlier, especially in this time of deep uncertainty. According to a McKinsey report, more than 75% of customers have tried new brands since the outbreak began, indicating that companies are managing a drop in devotion.
Trust should be the most crucial value recommendation to turn this around for brands looking to enter the current risky market. With consumer loyalty more accessible than at any other moment in recent memory, here are six approaches brands can use to keep customers in extreme instances and then some.
Caring for employees
Customers recognize one of the pinnacle mental processes as visible with some brands – bringing light on their employees. Employees are the ones who make connections with customers. As a result, before providing extraordinary consumer experiences, organizations should give similar treatment to their staff.
Employee experience is critical to your brand’s ability to live and flourish in harsh conditions, especially over extended periods of unprecedented situations. Pay, benefits, and promotions aren’t the only things that employees value. Your staff is anticipating a tailor-made, flexible, and positive work environment.
Focus on developing premium employee opportunities and appreciation, and you’ll be able to create an excellent customer experience.
Caring for consumers
In uncertain times, the most crucial thing consumers can count on is consistent customer service. Customers who identify a brand with predictability and assurance are more likely to become repeat customers.
By leveraging data to help them pick which activities will have the most impact on their employees, customers, and societies, brands have the chance to help their customers’ needs to be recognized as transparent.
Show empathy
It goes without saying that firms should be completely conscious of their consumers’ feelings and emotions and drive with compassion in all advertising and marketing endeavours as long as pandemic vulnerability is normal. Brands should maintain their consumer relationships by delivering a hassle-free brand experience, which includes exploring online or in person, buying stuff, giving excellent customer support, and making returns simple, among other things.
Customer feedback, for example, is used to steer the travel and tourism industry’s strategy and create new rules to make travel easier and safer.
Small measures such as this have evolved significantly toward giving customers a sense of security while weighing their alternatives in this uncertainty.
Keep an open-mind
Things are continually changing as a result of COVID-19’s impact. Keeping precise and regular communication is something that might help a lot with those customer experience risks.
Aside from pre-emptive communication, brands must be accessible and approachable when customers raise queries. Clients require quick access to well-coordinated arrangements and updated information to trust the brands.
Advance by digitizing
Customers are visiting online retailers in more significant numbers and making further purchases on a more regular basis. Businesses must guarantee that their digital channels are ready to handle this transition as a result of it.
Difficult-to-navigate websites, icky crawlies during checkout, or a purchasing experience that isn’t updated throughout all platforms are all ways to lose a consumer. With up-close and personal interaction becoming less common, meet consumers where they are in their choice and provide the same (or greater) level of service as before the pandemic. According to Statista, more than 2.14 billion people are expected to stay online in 2017, up 29% from 2016.
Be who you are
While you must deliver the most outstanding service possible to your customers, you must do so in a consistent way with your brand. Trying to be everything to everyone, following trends, or adopting a completely new corporate identity can all come across as dishonest to your customers.
You don’t want to cure all of your customers’ issues; instead, you want to look for solutions to any issues they’re facing so that you may provide accurate and genuine advice, support, and expertise.
Brands can have the best hope of maintaining their customers loyal and pleased by remembering the things above, especially during difficult times.
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