We know we are entering a “new normal” even after all lockdowns for COVID-19 ease. Those in Singapore have just eased into Phase 2 of our country’s reopening.

Most agree that the new normal, which some predict might last for a few years, will consist of intermittent lockdowns, more digital touchpoints, and more restrictions around physical spaces. Recently, Brian Halligan (CEO, Hubspot) shared an informative deck on what we might expect of the new normal.

What does this mean for customer experience (CX), especially when CX is the key to acquiring customers and the landscape has changed?

I believe there is a good opportunity for companies to rethink and reboot their CX strategies on a clean slate. Companies that succeed well in positioning their CX strategy from this point onwards, will also succeed well in differentiating themselves, acquiring customers and even building long-term loyalty. The key is figuring out the kind of CX strategy that works well for our world today, and I address it below.

Effective customer experience and how it builds loyalty

The first key is to think about CX as a whole: what makes it effective in peacetime, how strong brands build loyalty, and what changes the game now.

Customer loyalty starts with effective personal relationships between customers and companies. In the sales context, the most effective salespeople and advisors never sound “sales-sy”. They are customer-centric and often go beyond the call of duty, safeguarding client interests and focusing on creating value. Clients that have had experiences exceeding expectations stay loyal to such advisors even as these advisors move on to new companies.

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We know that an effective CX strategy puts itself in the shoes of the customer and considers the customer at all touchpoints. The main challenge in the new normal is that digital touchpoints and interfaces are by nature impersonal and there aren’t ways for companies to engage customers through events, so the key question is: how do companies show customer-centricity and build personal relationships despite this?

In-person customer experience

We can first analyse different touchpoints, especially with the rise of physical-digital fusions. Many retail companies, especially in the e-commerce space (such as Style Theory and Love, Bonito), are omni-channel.

Those with brick-and-mortar platforms could think about how social distancing and contact tracing measures change the way customers physically interact with their business. Do they pose “barriers to entry”, which discourage customers from patronising stores?

Customers might also hang around within these enclosed spaces for longer periods since signing in and out is inconvenient. If there are fewer people and they are hanging around longer, then there is an opportunity for companies to re-create customer interactions as experiential journeys. This can create enjoyment-associations and affection for the brand.

Pre-COVID-19, some e-commerce companies had already started shifting towards curating physical-digital experiences. Love, Bonito in Singapore had their latest store at Funan providing an eclectic space with digital catalogues and stocks updated in real-time. The space had an AR feature allowing shoppers to view the space using decorative filters.

There was an artful curation of visually stimulating displays and neon lights. Of course, there are further considerations for a post-Covid-19 shopping experience – surfaces should be touch-free, rather than be touchscreens.  Perhaps now, panels and screens showing animations and immersive art might be a new tactic.

Also Read: How startups can consistently acquire new customers post-COVID-19

A post-COVID-19 future might accelerate re-imagination of the immersive superstore or the experience hub.

There are other broader concerns to monitor in a well-rounded CX strategy that is beyond the scope of this article. Privacy might be an issue if customers become wary of being tracked.

Resistance and misplaced anger might also increase, as customers get annoyed with being told what to do and how to behave in these prescriptive environments. Businesses will have to manage these considerations with empathetic communication strategies.

Digital customer experience

Given the weight of digital engagement now, refining touchpoints on digital platforms is an important key.

We are all familiar that the amount of time it takes for a user (or customer) to achieve their objective on a platform influences the quality of their experience. A viral recent study by product expert Peter Ramsey (writer of Built for Mars) compares the amount of time (number of clicks and of days) it takes to open a bank account in the UK. Challenger banks perform better than most incumbents. Of course, it is more complicated than that as a faster experience is not the only factor determining a high-quality experience.

In the second instalment, he looks at his experience of sending payments, evaluating a comprehensive mix of factors with incumbents and challengers winning at different ones.

Also Read: Customer experience: The opportunity that growing businesses are failing to see

Generally, we all realise that ease of use and access to key functions are important. Customers find a lagging website or having too many steps a poor experience. For example, while chatbots are well-intentioned, an unresponsive chatbot is a poor experience, and so is a chatbot that is unable to provide answers even after a user has spent time typing their questions.

While we have talked about functional websites and apps, an interesting tactic that has fared well now is using AR in digital apps. This is another take on the digital-physical fusion, with an emphasis on assimilating the physical into the digital. This article gives an example of Singapore physical-first furniture retailer Castlery adapting well by re-creating their physical showrooms in AR, enabling customers to enjoy virtual tours of living spaces.

It’s impressive that they have tagged all the items and enabled true-to-scale capability for its furniture pieces, so that users can visualise in real-time how the furniture would look against the real-life dimensions and appearance of their rooms. Chinese retail also shows us the future of e-commerce experiences ahead – they sell products through livestreaming by showing viewers how products – from clothes to make-up – look in real-time and has actually resulted in increased sales. This could be the standard for customer engagement using digital platforms.

The last factor to consider is the use of personalisation to tailor any recommendations, advice, products to specific customer needs. Data analytics and machine learning are commonly discussed as tools to extract deep insights from user data to build products and strategies. One issue here is privacy, data protection and consent, but that is also a broader topic outside of this article.

How to shape the customer experience and build a connection 

Most know that the key to winning customers and preventing them from disengaging lies in reducing friction throughout their interactions with the business. As many digital products are easily substitutable, some marketing strategies also aim to create customer and product stickiness through loyalty and reward programmes.

However, it’s fair to say that such campaigns can become undifferentiated gimmicky races-to-the-bottom driving price wars. So, how else can companies differentiate themselves through their CX strategies?

I suggest that we have to start from first principles and understand why some salespeople and advisors retain clients more than others do. Companies must build “personal” relationships and the brand is an important medium to achieve that.

Also Read: Authenticity first: 5 tips for effective customer communication post-COVID-19</a>

A brand goes beyond just aesthetics. It comprises all messaging communicated through tangible and intangible displays, such as visual design, content, actions. Even the quality of the digital user experience affects brand perception – poor quality denotes an untrustworthy or sloppy brand.

The brand is a fabric of what the company stands for, from their mission to their values and impact. Customers feel engaged with a brand when the brand is empathetic, the company values resonate with them and are values they care about. They may even learn new insights about the world that they wouldn’t have known.

The deeper question to ask that is rarely explored in-depth amongst all UX/ CX, marketing and brand strategies is: what is the kind of brand that is inspiring of loyalty in a world like this today, and what characterises this world now? That will inform what customers need from a brand today.

Branding that inspires loyalty

We live in polarised times, driven by multi-directional tensions, with COVID-19 exacerbating these. There are geopolitical, economic, socio-political tensions between society, government, business and financial markets. Customers now have baseline expectations for how companies respond, whether they add value to the public good, and whether they walk their talk. Any good brand strategy in these times gets to the core of stakeholder capitalism.

Types of indicators include: how do brands respond to ESG concerns; do they employ equitable practices in their supply chains; are employees, contractors, workers down the supply chain fairly compensated; is the work culture toxic or exploitative; do they step up in a global crisis; do they respond to societal issues. Empathy has also become a key criterion: does the company genuinely care about their customers and their stakeholders?

A recent example includes the widespread socio-political discussion on systemic racism sparked by the unjustified death of African-American George Floyd by a police officer. This has rocked the world and everyone, from the average person to big business, is weighing in. During these sensitive times, people observe how brands react.

Also Read: Between data and gut feeling, which one do Singaporean customers trust to make decisions?

Many have expressed that any systemic silence is being noticed, while others call for actions over words. Big tech such as Netflix, Amazon and Microsoft have issued public statements expressing regret and solidarity. VC firms and networks such as a16z and SoGal have prepared funds, grants and programmes targeted at Blacks, Latinx and other minority entrepreneurs.

CEOs of global brands have also personally spoken out through public or company-circulated statements. Now that some time has passed, companies have also taken the time to write out concrete action plans (such as Microsoft and Crunchbase).

In fact, consumers are noticing when there’s incongruence between the public stance of a company and their actual actions – such is Facebook’s case, where they are mired in a controversy due to their lack of regulation towards the US president’s incendiary and racist posts. They have been criticised as being inauthentic although they have announced a donation towards anti-racism efforts.

Right now, more than ever, consumers see that “what you do is who you are” (borrowing the title of Ben Horowitz’s book). All statements by tech companies are being logged by The Plug through crowdsourced insights and made public. Although nobody can escape the question of authenticity or performative allyship, it is obvious when a brand is making a genuine effort to step up (even if they hadn’t succeeded before) or when they are paying only lip service.

On the local and regional front in Asia, responses towards socio-political matters, whether global or local, are usually more muted. This might be due to cultural differences; I believe the tech community shouldn’t shun these topics, but that is a broader topic outside of this article.

Also Read: Coping with consumer behaviour during the COVID-19 crisis

There have been other actions (or inaction) through which tech brands in Asia illustrate their values.  Jack Ma and Alibaba donated masks and COVID-19 test-kits around the world, regardless of region. Alibaba also started providing supplier credit to US small businesses.

Razer set up face mask production to produce five million free face masks for Singapore. These are steps that show a strong social awareness of public duty to step up in a global crisis – that they care enough about public solidarity to leverage their resources to help the community. These can bolster consumer confidence and trust in these brands, especially amidst trying times.

Again, there is always the question whether all these actions are sincere or mere PR exercises, but eventual consistency in value-creating efforts speaks for itself. A good example of branding and authenticity arose recently. When Nike released an anti-racism marketing campaign with a twist on its signature tagline ‘Just Do It’, it sparked discourse split between praise and disdain for the sports giant.

While some praised Nike for speaking up in a prominent manner through the eyebrow-raising twist, others criticised them for taking advantage of a serious matter to spin an opportunistic marketing campaign. Although the public may never come to any agreement on this, Nike then followed up with actions by working with Michael Jordan to donate US$10 million towards anti-racism efforts over the next 10 years.

No matter anyone’s final verdict on these matters, we can generally agree – better that there are actions done for the public good than there are none, as we remember those that showed up for us in bad times than not. The same applies to how we experience brands.

Right now, what customers need and expect from brands have exceeded textbook requirements of good UX and good customer service. Our experience of brands sits within our larger experience of the world. Our experience of the world shapes what we need as people and hence what we expect of brands.

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We connect with a brand that is human during trying times. We remember if they were empathetic towards their customers and the community when people went through hardships and polarised conflicts divided us. We look to them for moral authority and support when the world struggles to find its footing.

While we are amid a great reset, seizing this opportunity to re-imagine and execute a strong CX strategy can build long-term loyalty. A holistic CX strategy is customer-centric when it walks in the customer’s shoes, integrating strong UX strategy and a brand strategy that is well-fit for current times.

In a trying period where people must swap in-person engagement for digital and fault lines are rupturing, being able to be personal, human and authentic is a strong differentiating factor. Right now more than ever, society expects brands not to turn away but to speak up on things that matter to everyone. When customers find your brand sincere and empathetic, they will remember you and help you on your path.

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