PreCOVID-19 to COVID-19 to PostCOVID-19 dilemma for CIOs and Wayout

From last 4 months we have seen that COVID-19 has turned the wheels of industry in the direction which was not anticipated by many. Many corporations have changed or have been forced to change the way they are looking at business or the way they are executing business. Since there is no vaccine or cure available as of today, the actions taken by individuals, corporations as well as governments are towards prevention which has impacted the whole fabric of personal and professional life. It has changed the manner in which basic things are done e.g. we no more shake hands when we meet or we do not come within perimeter of 6 ft from other person, we cannot go out and eat, we prefer ordering even groceries and veggies online rather than going out and choosing ourselves, guests are not welcome, we are afraid of travel, large RFPs are submitted, presented, awarded without an in person meeting, I can go on and on. Smart businesses have created mechanisms to handle this anxiety in the minds of customer and developed incentives like free and safe home delivery to promote the same and offset the downside created by odd customer behavior. Most of the businesses are suffering due to lack of customers coupled with lack of intent of buying not-so-essential things from customer. Customer also has learnt to live with different kind of processes where everything happens from home, most of the stuff is bought online, people have started planning for groceries and essentials which might not be available easily, it has gone to a level where in disturbance from kid in a professional meeting is accepted. Scientists are working hard, and they will definitely find some vaccine and / or cure for this virus. Just that we do not know when. When they find the cure will everything return back to the old glory or there will be a new way. Everyone kind of believes that it will not be the old way but there will be a new normal that we will need to deal with.

• Do we know what is this new normal? – No
• Do we know if this new normal will be same for all? – We know that it will not be same for all, but we do not know how it will differ

If we look at situation in which most of the CIOs are today, no one envies it.

•  They have to ensure that the business runs with whatever constraints have been enforced,
•  They have to ensure that the business runs even with the new way of business transactions (which is evolving as the COVID -19 situation is unfolding) by building new applications or modifying existing applications,
•   They have to ensure that IT environment secure from all the predators
•   They have to conserve the cash, forcing them to make difficult decisions like closing/postponing noncritical running projects, reducing IT team with no fault of theirs (with a knowledge that they will need them back soon enough and may not get them back) etc.

This is not all, the CIOs have to be ready to zoom in to high gear as soon as a solution for COVID-19 situation is found. Business teams will assess the situation and determine strategy adjusting to new normal and recovering all the losses that it encountered during the crisis. They would expect every department in the organization to step up and do their best. CIO will be expected to work in tandem and get the IT systems ready for the new normal almost in parallel to the realization of new normal. This is tough as new normal will comprise significant online/automation component and IT has to play a major role in it. With all these uncertainties and moving parts, CIOs are in dilemma as to what to do, when to do and how to do? There is no case study nor there is any template and they have to find their unique way out.

I think, Differentiated Needs Pyramid, if applied to the three situations i.e. PreCOVID-19, During COVID-19 and PostCOVID-19, CIOs can find a way out to bring in some proactive measures and partner with business to get it back on track as fast as possible. 

In my earlier blog, Predictable Customer (Internal) Experience Improvement- CIO Perspective  

 https://personalandprofessionalexcellence.blogspot.com/2019/09/predictable-customer-internal.html,  We have seen that a CIO can be successful in improving the experience that they are providing to their customers i.e. Business Leaders by understanding their needs better. Following picture depicts the differentiated needs of the Business Leaders in the business as usual (PreCOVID-19) situation.

This is a five level Differentiated Needs Pyramid and once CIO is able to identify specific needs for the each level for Business Leaders corresponding to their business, then they can take up the right initiatives and go beyond the expectations from business and be a partner to business in its growth. 

If we extend the same philosophy a bit further and analyze this pyramid for three situations i.e. PreCOVID-19, During COVID-19 and PostCOVID-19, we can see how the needs of Business Leaders are going to change at each level in each phase. Using this, CIOs can predict what is going to come their way and they can start addressing the same. Following diagram provide the glimpse of how the needs are likely to be in these three situations Each CIO can plot the 5 levels of specific needs for their business leaders using needs of their specific business.

Each business is unique and their strategy to woo their customers is unique. This needs to be considered while detailing out the actions under each level that might be required to be taken by CIOs in order to satisfy or exceed the needs of their customers i.e. Business Leaders. If a similar exercise is undertaken by Business leaders for their end customers, they will know how the needs of their end customers are changing, thus what strategies need to be adopted by business to satisfy their needs. 

In my earlier blog Predictability in Customer Experience Improvement – A Perspective for Grocery Retail Industry,

 https://personalandprofessionalexcellence.blogspot.com/2019/07/predictability-in-customer-experience.html?_sm_au_=iVV4Rtj4p0NLfDVr  I had taken an example of Grocery Retail scenario for two segments of customer i.e. Customers with age greater than 50 & customers with age below 30. It was clear that the needs vary at each level and the business leaders assess them for specific customer base to determine specific initiatives for creating stickiness. I have extended the same example for customers with age greater than 50 and created a scenario of three stages PreCOVID-19, DuringCOVID-19 and PostCOVID-19. We see a significant swing in the needs as we transition. Some changes made during COVID-19 phase do stick around or get a little modified and get added to the PreCOVID-19 scenario to give a unique set of needs at different levels to the customer base. The diagram below provides a glimpse at this. Certain things like Online Ordering, Free Home delivery, Easy Curbside delivery, Security, pop up at multiple places, which means business will need to extend and enhance the model they have created during COVID-19 and make  

available to customer. The only change would be it will not be a compulsion on consumer to use this facility, but it will be an additional perk that consumer can avail. Better cost-effective way to create this facility through an IT project would definitely be on card for such an organization. Another situation could be around delivery; free home delivery or same day delivery or same day curbside pick up would be expected and if CIO can create an application which will help Supply chain team to make it happen, the business leaders would love it. During COVID-19 consumers were ready to bear some hardship due to fear and desperation, however in PostCOVID-19 scenario, they would not be ready for hardship and will expect the same facilities without hardship and additional cost. The race would be to satisfy these new needs (New Normal) and win over more customers and higher business.

In Summary, the transition from PreCOVID-19 to COVID-19 to PostCOVID-19 is dramatic. Consumer behavior will change almost 180^o each phase. A new normal will be attained in a short period after the solution to COVID-19 problem is found. There will be race to understand this new normal and satisfy the needs of customers in this new normal so that business can get itself back on track. The level of uncertainty is preventing business and their IT teams from launching new initiatives. In this situation Differentiated Needs Pyramid can help Business and IT to proactively look at what could be possible areas that they should work on and be ahead in the game.

Customer Experience – Perception or Reality

Customer experience is the frontier where the battle for customer loyalty (and associated revenue) is being fought. Every industry and companies therein have started focusing on it. New ways and methods are being experimented regularly. Companies are trying to give a better customer experience than what they are offering today or what their competitors are offering. This is to create a unique differentiation and create a challenge to its competitors.  The game is to give customers something beyond their expectation in every transaction that happens between company and customer. Key is to understand the expectations, which do change based on the situation, and provide a right response at right time. 

Gartner has defined Customer Experience as the customer's perceptions and related feelings caused by the one-off and cumulative effect of interactions with a supplier's employees, systems, channels or products.  As per Forrester, Customer Experience is, how customers perceive their interactions with your company.

Note the word perception used in both the definitions. Perception, according to Cambridge dictionary, is a thought, belief, or opinion, often held by many people and based on appearances. Which means customer experience is totally dependent on how a specific customer feels specifically about a specific thing during the interaction. It may not be reality and different customers will have different experiences for the same interaction and totally governed by the psyche of the customer at that moment. Theoretically the same customer can experience different experience for the exact same interactions at two different times. If Customer Experience is a perception, a few questions arise

·       Is there any Base line or Absolute reality or Empirical Gold standard for Customer Experience which can be used by companies?

·       Is there any way to measure perceptions?

·       Perceptions can change based on various extraneous factors on which company has no control: in that case, is this a valid measure or we need to find a better way to understand the perceptions quantitatively?

Customer experience is subjective and hence measured in generic terms like Bad-Good-Superlative or on the scale of 1-5, etc. i.e Customer experience is a result of interaction between the response a customer gets throughout the transaction to procure any product/service vis-à-vis the expectations he/she has, before starting the transaction. If the response matches the expectations, customer typically brands it as a “GOOD Experience”, if expectations are not met, the experience varies on the negative side and if customer gets something beyond what is expected, the experience gets labeled as SUPERLATIVE. This brings out another variable which impacts Customer Experience i.e. “expectation of the customer from the transaction”. This impacts the score given by customer. In the normal circumstances, current experience becomes baseline expectation for the next transaction and so on. The same level of interaction creates -ve impact on Customer Experience levels as the +ve gap between current experience and expectation is reduced and over a period of time, it becomes zero or -ve, turning the direction of Customer Experience in opposite direction.

Although Customer Experience is a perception of customer and it can be different for different customers, customers take their actions like buying more or shifting to competitor based on these perceptions. So, these perceptions become reality for the company, and they need to act as if they are absolute reality. Hence Customer experience could be defined as REALITY OF PERCEPTION

This subjectivity and variability create a significant challenge for companies. It is difficult to quantify the Customer Experience level for any specific transaction with customers thus posing further challenges in identifying the remedial measures as well as implementing them to improve the CX. This is one of the key reasons why companies are hesitant to implement new measures and unsure of their results. If we are able to remove the subjectivity from the Customer Experience measurement, the companies can heave a sigh of relief. I have an idea to achieve this and converting Customer Experience from Perception to Reality which can be quantified. The key is to use the available data in the system rather than asking feedback through a survey (which adds subjectivity). We can define success criteria for any transaction e.g. If we are organizing an event in the store, success criteria of the event could be increase in footfalls into specific zone in the store. If we are able to count footfalls at the event, footfalls at the target zone when the event is on and compare the same to the footfalls before the event was launched we can find if the event was effective and customers liked it or not without asking the customers. If the footfalls are more than the normal footfalls, the event is effective; if they are same then event has no impact and if they are reduced, then event has -ve impact. These measurements can be taken on continuous basis and company can tweak the event on continuous basis till they get the right result. The example given above is a simplistic example to get an understanding of concept of quantification of Customer Experience without asking customer. With new developments in AI/ML, several algorithms could be written to understand complex situation.

Once we are able to quantify the Customer Experience using available data (not using survey), it could be rationalized across multiple segments, zones, geographies, etc. and company can take appropriate actions. It is now no more Reality of Perception but Reality of Reality.