What to Focus on as You Reopen Your Business

COVID-19 has strongly affected the norms of business across every industry. As companies continue to open, business leaders must rethink the ways it’s always been done and focus on developing and innovating what works best for consumers and audiences as well as internal employees in this new landscape.

This is a unique opportunity to reimagine your business model for the long term. Here are four ideas to consider as you reopen your business.

Keep up with technology.
Nothing is more fitting than a discussion on where digital transformation, enhancing customer experience and eliminating customer friction will arrive post-COVID-19. Let’s face it; after this, all customers will be tech savvier and will expect their brand experiences to match their previous best experience while in lock-down.
Having the right technology in place to communicate with your customers will help you be outward focused and customer-centric as you reopen. Your clients expect you to continue to have the tools to get the job done quickly, efficiently and effectively.

Deliver value to your customers and employees.
Focus on delivering more value to your people so your company will be sustainable. Ultimately your customers and employees care most about the value you create for them. Use your social media, website and any media to elaborate these points of assurance. – It’s vital to remind people post-COVID of your company’s value proposition.

• Communicate proactively with your customers
• While opening your physical office or shop – continue to go digital with your services to continue to provide access to your customers who are still wary of a post COVID world.
• Embrace discounts, offers and incentives to keep customers and employees loyal
• Keep employees on digital capabilities that will better support customers

Keep moving with the times
Be agile and maintain the ability to change direction as you reopen your business.
The pandemic has shown that it is possible to make decisions faster without breaking the business, that employees can take on more responsibility for execution, action, and collaboration and that there’s a great potential for companies to work together to make industry waves.
Make sure to have systems and processes in place that enable change, capture and apply real-time data about your customers and industry competitors.

Continue to advance your customer experience.
Work towards a frictionless customer experience by examining every function, system, workflow, technology and asset.
Use these actions to map out your reopening plan:

• Create a clear customer experience vision
• Capture customer feedback in real-time
• Measure the ROI from delivering great customer experience
• Make being a customer as comfortable as physically possible.
• Continually Refine your customer service structures.
• Continue to expand your self-service options.