Has it occurred to you that the pandemic will be over soon (thanks to technology) and customer needs will still exist? Rather than go with the flow, it’s time to train our mind to discover, learn, relearn and execute.
A plan to retain and attract customers after COVID-19 is gone is imperative. And one of the major problems businesses face today is if the behaviour and preferences of customers will change.
And what about the business model and the key resources that drive the business? How does the business make money and has that been disrupted? Are your resources, be it human or technology still relevant? The pandemic has been around long enough to alter some customer behaviours and preferences.
POST-PANDEMIC IMPLICATIONS FOR BUSINESS
And businesses should begin to pay attention to what the implications would be for the business. Some behaviours will continue once the pandemic is over. Some behaviours or preferences will return to the way they were. Others will return with slight changes while some will disappear for good. The task is to figure out which is which and then implement a strategy accordingly.
Take for example lodging in hotels. People may not be booking hotels as much presently but it is hard to see that not coming back once the pandemic is over.
For travelling, well that is likely to return too albeit with some fundamental changes. Now you will have Labs at most if not all airports and proof of having taken the vaccine as a requirement to fly.
And there are activities likely to cease altogether. Teleconferencing for example during meetings. Video/Audio platforms like Teams and Zoom have taken over. And this preference is likely to stick. Hardly will you find an organisation teleconferencing these days.
Like we mentioned earlier, the job is to figure out which is which. If the behaviour is part of a routine, chances are that it will continue. Think of the neighbourhood gym.
Emotionally motivated behaviours like hanging out with friends, spending Christmas with the family will resume as well. A unique experience that promotes camaraderie must be part of the restaurant’s plan.
But people will do away with a behaviour if there’s a better way to do it, as long as the new way of doing things is relatively seamless and affordable.
Is there pressure from powers that be to change behaviour? I know a lot of people that will refuse the vaccine unless told it’s a requirement to travel.
Rather than focusing on irrelevant stuff, we can turn to previous learnings that have mapped behavioural change over long periods coupled with the submissions aforementioned, giving us multiple scenarios we can choose from regardless of the eventual outcome.
