How your CX data can help you navigate COVID-19 disruption

As our clients mobilize their responses to the current disruption, they are increasingly asking us how their CX data and systems can be helpful in managing their business through the global coronavirus epidemic, as well as, how to ensure de-risking long term customer impacts. Our answer is to act now and make maximum use of their existing CX programs to inform action and risk mitigation plans.

Industries like travel and hospitality are seeing more immediate downturn as people and policies pull back on travel; consumer goods companies are seeing increased demand for products and the mortgage market is heating up. While individual industries and organizations may experience the impacts in different ways, everyone will be impacted and what is immediately clear is that the customer experience landscape that we saw coming into this decade will be altered for some time to come.

Mapping these changes and reacting to them are top of mind for executives around the world and customer experience information can play a large role in how they navigating and respond.

Our Ipsos CX practice encourages companies to focus on five areas to leverage their significant CX investments to help risk mitigation strategies:

Stay Connected:

Use existing programs to stay close to your customers and employees by listening via your existing VoC program. Mine data for emerging trends. Add topical questions on issues like public health and hygiene management. Benchmark your data to broader consumer sentiment and linked VoC data with operational data for enriched understanding. Review your most recent feedback against the run up to the crisis to see what has changed. Most important, stay on top of closing alerts for customers.

Use CX Analytics:

Perform analytics using existing data to be responsive to changes and inform strategy. Update CX targets, manage churn prediction and action, reduce cost to serve, understand changes in scores and needs, model revenue leakage and understand how to use incentives to drive impact.

Manage Costs:

Drive operational improvements using your VOC data as it will allow you to understand where and how to cut cost through operational efficiency. Prioritize change for short- and medium-term ROI.

Plan Ahead:

Use benchmarks and CX data to understand changing customer needs and behaviors and use it to inform workforce management plans, as well as, future investments for gaining a competitive advantage.

Act Now:

Developing your risk mitigation plan and activating it now is critically important. Moreover, there is no need to wait, use the data you have at hand as it will tell you a significant amount about what to do and where to do it.

Making use of the information at hand will drive a thoughtful response to the economic uncertainty. Adapting to this will help to improve the customer experience during the disruption and taking this opportunity now will lead to a more productive customer base when things settle down.

Your Ipsos team can help you in understanding the impact on your data and what to do with it. Please give us a call if we can help.