Everyone, including your customers, is suddenly focused on the COVID-19 pandemic. Should you recalibrate your customer experience (CX) efforts in response? Yes. Many of the specifics vary by industry, but here are the three essentials (in summary) that every organization should prioritize.

  1. Start With Empathy — Understand Your Customers In This Moment

You’re not going to find out what you need to know through surveys alone — especially not in this situation. To build the customer understanding required, you should:

  • Invest in having live conversations with customers now.
  • Get your research professionals onto customer service calls.
  • Proactively reach out to customers.
  • Respond with concrete steps.
  1. Adapt Your CX Accordingly

There are aspects of the customer experiences you’ve been delivering that may have been perfect a few weeks ago but may be all wrong now:

  • Critically review the current experiences you are delivering.
  • Do the same with planned experiences.
  • Hit the pause button where needed.
  • Prioritize simplicity and clarity more than ever.
  1. Help Your Employees Deliver Great CX Despite The Crisis

They might be frontline staff taking calls from anxious customers. They might be IT staff working around the clock to help the entire workforce be productive from home as companies ask staff to stay away from offices and work remotely. Whatever their role in your company, this is a unique moment for them as the human embodiment of your brand:

  • Employees face uncertainty and anxiety, too.
  • Customers in crisis drive up the stress level for employees
  • Invest in improving employees’ well-being — it will improve CX.

You may be interested in my related post, Customers Are Staying Home — So Prioritize Digital UX, and my colleague Rick Parrish’s post, Getting Digital CX Right Amid The Pandemic. If you’d like more depth about the three essentials above and you’re a Forrester client, see Improve Customer Experience In Response To The Coronavirus Pandemic.

What CX challenges is your company facing as a result of this pandemic? Would you be willing to speak with Forrester about them? If so, we’d be grateful for your story, whether it’s to share with us just the problems you’re encountering or the best practices you’re applying in this crisis — reach out to Harley or me anytime via LinkedIn.