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The Magic Sauce for Business Survival in the Winter of this Pandemic

Authors: Jay Baer Jay Baer
Posted Under: Customer Experience
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Business Survival Pandemic

This post is based on a webinar I presented with my friends at Calabrio (a Convince & Convert Client)—get instant access to the webinar now —> A Happy Team Creates Happy Customers: A Success Guide for the New Era.

When it comes to customer experience during the pandemic, customers will not give you a “pandemic pass.” Yes, your business is facing unprecedented times. Yes, your employees are facing unprecedented times. Yes, your team is achieving new feats of productivity and concentration. And yes, you are facing unpredictable challenges and solving new problems every single day.

Still, customers will not give you a pandemic pass when it comes to their experience purchasing your product or service. 

Customers want things to be quick and clear. They want kindness. And they want you to deliver these things consistently to them every single time. 

They want exceptional experiences. Maybe now more than ever.

Customers are re-wiring how they make purchases. Companies may be inclined to assume that customers are looking for lower prices. But it’s not about price. In fact, Podium research shows that 28% of customers say price matters less since the pandemic. 

Customer experience is the differentiator.

Podium research shows that more than half of customers (54%) have made a purchase from a business for the first time since the pandemic. Of those customers, nearly 9 in 10 (89%) plan to stay with this new provider, Podium says.

More than half of customers (54%) have made a purchase from a business for the first time since the pandemic. Click To Tweet

Everybody’s customers—yours and mine—are more willing than ever before to change from who they buy products and services. This puts even more emphasis on customer experience as the buying differentiator than ever before. 

Meanwhile, our workforces—yours and mine—have been massively disrupted. Schedules, locations, focus, productivity has changed. 

Our inclination is to keep our customers happy. But the real key, the core strategy now, is to keep our teams happy. Because one begets the other: EX powers CX.

The employee experience powers the customer experience. 

Employee Experience Pandemic

It is almost impossible to deliver a spectacular customer experience without a spectacular employee experience. This has always been true; it’s just that now, the circumstances of influence have changed. 

In order to be successful in the next phase – the winter of the pandemic –companies need to up their flexibility game and up their workforce management. The confluence of factors of today’s environment demands that we coach and collaborate with our employees like we would our own family; that we focus on our employee experience like the survival of our business depends on it. 

This means we don’t look at just the “what” that happens in the day-to-day. It means we go deeper. We look for the why and the how. We look for opportunities to truly understand our team’s issues and work hand in hand with them to solve them, for their good, our good and for the health of our business. That’s the only way we’re going to get to spectacular employee experience, and in turn, spectacular customer experience. 

Workforce management in the era of “work from home” means new things. One example of a tool that helps companies achieve this is the Calabrio ONE Workforce Engagement Management Suite. It’s a tool that enables teams to do so many things within one package, making it the perfect recipe for the times we find ourselves in. 

In this new era, we need to:

  1. Empower our employees and agents. Flexibility is now a top priority – more so than it’s ever been. And on a scale that it’s ever been. With kids at home, healthcare and schedule challenges, increased demands, “being flexible” as an employer means something different in 2021 than it did in 2019.
  2. Coach and develop employees with highly targeted training and education. One of the biggest needle-movers for team satisfaction, and therefore, customer satisfaction is increasing transparency and communication in a personalized way at all levels of an organization.
  3. Leverage technology systems to identify and ameliorate challenges. Real-time technology tools can help monitor schedules and provide an early warning with critical info.

Remote work is a new reality, and it’s no longer viewed as a productivity drain. According to PWC, 54% of CFOs plan to make remote work a permanent option. 

Technology is one way that you can improve your attendance and communication. And if you have agents – you’ll get better adherence. You can improve the overall quality of your company’s customer experience to make it better than ever before.

Calabrio ONE customers report better attendance, better adherence, better handle time, barring tech issues. Overall, the quality of the customer experience is better than ever. 

Calabrio ONE can help you get there. 

Here’s to your success and the continued health and happiness of your team. 

Please watch the full webinar I presented with friends at Calabrio, A Happy Team Creates Happy Customers: A Success Guide for the New Era. Side note: Calabrio is a Convince & Convert client, and we are big fans!

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