The Coronavirus pandemic has brought a lot of challenges and changes to businesses. Companies had to rethink their operations, work organization, relations with customers, supply chains. Some countries now abate quarantine measures and hopefully, the toughest part is behind. However, the uncertainty remains and the coming back to “normal” might be another challenge. In this article, we will have a look-back on the past couple of months of the lockdown and share our ideas on further actions.

Over two months of the lockdown

The quarantine taking place in most of the countries for over two months has caused lots of changes for businesses.
Closed stores and isolation measures forced many shoppers to go online. According to statista.com survey results, 78% of the respondents in the UK and 69% in the US went less to the shops, while 43% of the UK and 55% of the US survey participants shopped more online. Ecommerce has proved itself essential in these days.
The confinement has also changed the ways of interacting with customers and figuring out their new pain points. To stay afloat in the situation when conditions change daily, companies had to look for quick insights. Given a surge of time people spent online and particularly on social media, many companies turned to it as a source of information on customers’ needs and real-time trends. Another source of valuable customer data became feedback from frontline employees. They are the once who know best how shoppers are feeling, how interactions are changing. Collecting and analyzing this information could and still can make a critical difference in the constantly changing situation that we’re witnessing.
In the face of rapidly changing shopping habits and lifestyles of the customers, businesses had to adapt quickly. Some eCommerce sellers added hygiene products, medical supplies, and various self-care related products to their catalogs to meet the demand. Others have had to change their delivery models to offer curbside pickup or start offering digital versions of their services.
Moreover, whenever it was possible, companies started working remotely. Many businesses had to rethink their supplier chains and channels, develop new collaboration models.

What’s next

Now countries start slowly restoring the regular life, opening borders, and little by little allowing usual activities. However, uncertainty remains. It is still time to do little steps and constantly monitor the situation. Yet it’s time to actively prepare to ride the coming wave of demand.

Customer relations

At this point, it is important to figure out what customers will value, post-COVID-19, develop new use cases, and tailored offers based on those assumptions.
Think about the needs and concerns of your customers right now and after the quarantine. Depending on your industry, the customers might have new issues to be addressed.
For instance, if you are in the B2B sector, your customers might be worried about supply chain disruptions or about managing employees in ‘work from home’ environment. They might as well struggle with a slowdown in demand or have issues with their cash flows.
Once you know the customer needs better, you can re-position your products and services. You can assess your readiness to meet the demand and serve in the best way, check your inventory and adjust sales pitch and marketing to address any specific needs.

Find opportunities to make special offers
Economic uncertainty and lost jobs might have increased price sensitivity. Offering a special discount on specific items could be a good way to bring shoppers back in case the spending in your store went down.

Come up with a great loyalty program
It is fair anytime that a company earns more from loyal customers. These times are no exception. In fact, it’s even more important now to engage your new and existing customers and stimulate their loyalty.
More than ever shoppers are active online, so it’s a perfect time to use a loyalty program to encourage customers to come back right from purchase #1. Not only it ensures your stable business longevity but also makes customers feel appreciated.

Improve your processes and operations

While it’s hard to predict how the market will be, there is a chance that the post-coronavirus economic recovery might happen faster than we expect.
Some industries that experienced a drop in sales during the pandemic may see a quick demand revival once people begin to get back to everyday life more and more. So, it’s important to be well prepared and stay in a strong position to bounce back quickly.

If at the moment you experience a short-term slowdown, this might be a perfect time to re-evaluate your operations, processes, tools, and platforms without worrying as much about disruptions. Then do long-term strategic planning and adjustment. Examine properly your eCommerce platform and integrations, improve site’s SEO, optimize checkout experience to make sure you’re ready for the return of usual shopping.

What else can you do for your eCommerce business? Go omnichannel. Make sure you’re present across marketplace platforms like Amazon, eBay, Google Shopping, Aliexpress, Facebook Shopping. And also consider creating an app and/or chatbots.

Not only eCommerce

The COVID-19 didn’t only force many businesses to consider selling online or strengthen their existing eCommerce, but also to digitize many work processes to enable remote teamwork or streamline collaboration with partners.
And that was just the beginning. For example, according to Gartner, 74% of companies plan to permanently shift to more remote work post-COVID.
To enhance productivity, flexibility, and interaction with customers, and as a result, reduce costs it is important to optimize and automate processes. And now is the best time to start if you haven’t yet.

The bottom line

The world situation in the past couple of months was truly outstanding. And even though now life starts to get back to normal, it is hard to predict how exactly we will come out of the pandemic, what would be the new shopping habits, what would be new governmental regulations, etc.
Businesses need to monitor the situation around the world daily and take little steps to adjust to rapidly changing conditions.
What is most important is to stay positive, stick to your company’s values, think strategically, and use this time to strengthen your business where it’s possible.