Opinion – Become Customer-Centric or…

Imagine, that it would need to take a global pandemic to force companies to think about their customers needs. The disruption to work practices as a result of COVID-19 has exposed many business practices that existed because of short term focus on profit rather than customer experience or satisfaction.

“We’re All in This Together”

… read the headlines in the email marketing from everyone from the local take-away restaurant to global financial institutions. And the memes have already begun circulating about the apparent change in attitude from brands who reluctantly served customer interests and now seem to be desperate for patronage.

This article was prompted by an email from a well known payment wallet, but I have received hundreds on a similar theme. It begins…

Millions of businesses around the world—and the people who run them—have been affected by Covid-19. Those businesses are vital to both local and global economies. To help ease the impact of these recent events on businesses, we are:

and then goes on to list out 3 things that the company will do to ‘help’ its customers. The email ends with…

Over the coming days and weeks, we’ll be helping businesses around the world by working to simplify … and helping more businesses…

So the question is. Why did it take a ‘Black Swan’ event to make a promise to do things you should have been doing anyway?

Around the world, consumers are recieving these marketing messages and asking. ‘That thing that you are offering now, that seems like something that would really benefit customers, so why now? Why weren’t you doing that thing that benefited your customers before this event?’

An Extinction Event?

There are some very tough decisions to be made here. Some business practices have come under a spotlight, and shifting value chains and power balances will force change.

The companies that focus on solving problems for their customers are the ones that should survive. Delivering ‘common sense‘ customer experience should result in more loyalty than an arbitrary and complicated points based discount scheme.

The “long nap” is over. The conditions that allowed companies to perpetuate practices like planned obsolescence and faux innovation have ended. Complacency and mediocrity are luxuries that can no longer be afforded.

Businesses have to adapt to the disruption, but how they adapt will determine their long term sustainability. Some companies will revert to the ‘how does this help my shareholders?’ mode. Time will tell whether the ‘how does this help my customer?’ mindset will be more successful.