Businesses have faced risk and difficulties like no other sector in this last year and, only on rare or narrow occasions, they have been able to get some kind of relief. As a result, the new plan of the actions for the easing of lockdown restrictions will be most welcomed. But this must not affect the businesses fall into a false sense of security or trust deficit world. They must still serve their customers in difficult circumstances for some time more and then get the rewards. One of the rare areas of opportunity that has rose for the companies during the pandemic is in the user interaction or the customer experience. Across the private sector, SAS research found that the number of digital users has grown by 10 per cent since the pandemic begun, with 58 per cent of those intending to continue usage moving forward. For businesses, this represents a whole new custom of digital converts with whom they can engage and offer a more personalized customer experience. The potential benefits of this are clear. The research found that almost three-fifths (59 per cent) of customers would pay more to buy and/or use products and services from businesses that had provided them with a good customer experience during COVID-19. This does not only stand true for the banking sector, even though the banks were fully equipped with the financial aid to face and overcome the pandemic and yet they struggled and some even failed. The reason is the incapability to maintain the trust relationship with their customers and having an imperfect digital experience led to the struggles.
Even the sectors like business, travels and real estate sectors were affected due to the same reason of not offering the user friendly approach. How often the customer who has got queries in his busy life is willing to wait days long for a solution to be provided by their merchant? The first thing any customer expects is to have a quick fix solution to his problems and to lead a hassle free transaction or any other service he has opted for. And many of the institutions failed to deliver this, which caused a great loss in losing the trust which was built through many years. The institutions started losing customers and the name they had made for themselves because of the digital incompetence. At the same time, many firms who took that extra step flourished amidst these issues and were able to deliver a customer friendly approach to their solutions and were able to maintain the trust of the clients and in turn could save the name. The pandemic especially bought comfort of working from home and this should have been taken as the key resolution and the firms should have been able to provide the solutions also from the comfort of their employees’ home and this would have helped in digitalizing as well helping everyone overcome the crisis in much fashioned way. To add, creating AI tools like chatbots which could give access to easy solutions for the customers would benefit the companies. Online experiences have made a name for themselves and it here to stay, utilizing it to the fullest may serve the purpose of achieving a success in the further coming days for all the big and small companies. Customers now have found a new level of convenience in online transacting and that they’re not willing to give up. So it is high time to go digital in every sector and then see the difference it brings to the sales or businesses.
