“When­ev­er a wild card be­comes pos­si­ble, the fu­ture plan­ning play­book has to be rewrit­ten.” This quote by Tamar Kas­riel, a re­tail fu­tur­ist, speaks vol­umes. She was com­ment­ing that fu­tur­ists had re­gard­ed the pan­dem­ic as a “wild card.” That is, an oc­cur­rence that would have big, world­wide im­pact, but a high­ly im­prob­a­ble event. Well, the event is here and we’re mud­dling our way through it’s big im­pact.

My fo­cal point in this state­ment is about the rewrit­ing of the play­book and in par­tic­u­lar, the cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence play­book. Cus­tomers have been coo­ing about their new­ly found free­dom to trans­act busi­ness when and where they choose, us­ing dig­i­tal tools. As well, they’ve been sig­nalling their in­ter­est in see­ing the com­ing at­trac­tions that busi­ness­es have in store for them, post lock­down.

I’ve been cu­ri­ous about cus­tomers’ re­ac­tions to con­duct­ing busi­ness on­line. The ma­jor­i­ty of per­sons who’ve re­spond­ed to my ques­tion­ing have said that they have no in­ten­tion of go­ing back to the “old way” of do­ing busi­ness. One ser­vice provider de­clared to me re­cent­ly that he would no longer be col­lect­ing a cheque for his ser­vices and that we should pay via di­rect de­posit to his ac­count. Mul­ti­ply his mi­gra­tion by the thou­sands like him and we be­gin to see the scale of the shift to on­line tech­nol­o­gy. The adop­tion of dig­i­tal tools has opened John Pub­lic’s ap­petite for con­ve­nience and ease of do­ing busi­ness. This sen­ti­ment ac­cords nice­ly with the ex­pand­ed tools that will have to be rolled out as part of the new “dig­i­tal way” of do­ing busi­ness.

Busi­ness­es, on the oth­er hand, are try­ing to catch their breath and catch a break from the body blows in­flict­ed by the dis­rup­tion. Their big wor­ry is the bat­tle to cope with hav­ing to triage rep­u­ta­tion ex­cel­lence, pub­lic health man­age­ment and eco­nom­ic sur­viv­abil­i­ty. As we look in­to the fu­ture and fol­low the arc of the dis­rup­tion, there’s even more dis­qui­et­ing news for busi­ness­es. We’re see­ing pro­tract­ed eco­nom­ic up­heaval loom­ing in the dis­tance. Whew and we’re on­ly in the fifth month of the year. No pres­sure.

The pan­dem­ic has brought in­di­vid­u­als, cus­tomers and busi­ness­es to their in­flec­tion points. In­di­vid­u­als are hav­ing deep, ex­is­ten­tial dis­cus­sions with them­selves about what mat­ters. Cus­tomers are re­flect­ing on whether they will con­tin­ue to pa­tro­n­ise their favourite re­tail­er, giv­en the re­tail­er’s so­cial­ly re­spon­si­ble and pub­lic safe­ty track record dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Busi­ness­es mean­while, faced with some or all of this con­tex­tu­al in­tel­li­gence, have to de­cide on the best land­ing points that will keep their cus­tomers hap­py, whilst nav­i­gat­ing an large­ly un­fa­mil­iar net­work of new tech­nol­o­gy and op­er­at­ing sys­tems.

Per­cep­tive busi­ness­es will con­nect the huge dis­play of hu­man­i­ty dur­ing this cri­sis, to cus­tomers’ need for more sen­si­tive dis­plays of con­cern from their favourite gro­cer or restau­rant. Cus­tomers will be in­clined to do busi­ness with busi­ness­es that have dis­played a “so­cial con­science” and not just rev­enue chas­ing be­hav­iour.

But let’s fo­cus on the “so­cial con­science” forces that are re­shap­ing cus­tomer per­sonas amidst this cri­sis. The “next nor­mal” may de­mand that busi­ness­es re-in­tro­duce them­selves with a re­newed com­mit­ment to val­ues that re­flect kind­ness, care and con­cern for their cus­tomers, em­ploy­ees and so­cial caus­es. As this “cus­tomer friend­ly touch” be­gins to gain trac­tion, busi­ness­es that am­pli­fy sim­plic­i­ty and em­pa­thy ac­tions will ben­e­fit.

Sim­plic­i­ty means that busi­ness­es will be­gin to pin­point and ex­punge the ma­jor­i­ty of com­plex­i­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with trans­ac­tions. Will elec­tron­ic sig­na­tures, chat­bots, in­ter­ac­tive teller ma­chines, a sin­gle bank card that en­ables all trans­ac­tions, con­tact­less pay­ments and self ap­proved loans be­come com­mon­place? Will in-per­son vis­its to busi­ness places be­come a thing of the past? The an­swer is yes, in time. Bear in mind that while Trinidad and To­ba­go, as well as the Caribbean re­gion are typ­i­cal­ly two to three years be­hind the rest of the world in dig­i­tal adop­tion and adap­ta­tion, our ac­cel­er­a­tion in­to the dig­i­tal age will con­tin­ue. Slow­ly maybe, but sure­ly.

An over-abun­dance of em­pa­thy has been on dis­play at a na­tion­al lev­el. Cus­tomers in their cit­i­zen in­car­na­tions, have been ex­tend­ing good­will and hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance to those less for­tu­nate and now are high­ly sen­si­tive to the lev­el of care that they ex­pect, in turn, from busi­ness­es. What cus­tomers have been giv­ing, they will now ex­pect to re­ceive. Busi­ness­es that are pow­ered by a “cus­tomer first” phi­los­o­phy, will not miss this mark­er. They would have al­ready com­mu­ni­cat­ed to their peo­ple that noth­ing is too much trou­ble in ser­vice de­liv­ery.

So, let me ad­dress the ele­phant in the room. Are any of these ser­vice de­liv­ery no­tions new? Ab­solute­ly not! Are the cus­tomer ex­pec­ta­tions mark­ers new? Again, ab­solute­ly not! What’s new is the con­text and the cli­mate in which we now find our­selves. The rav­ages of the pan­dem­ic have caused peo­ple to re­cal­i­brate first, what’s im­por­tant and what mat­ters to them. Next, to be­gin judg­ing their ser­vice providers with a more de­lib­er­ate yard­stick that is con­nect­ed to high­er or­der val­ues sys­tems and how those val­ues trans­late in­to the treat­ment of the cus­tomer.

Busi­ness lead­ers, as you con­tin­ue to roadmap your nav­i­ga­tion out of this lock­down, how will you trans­late lessons learnt in­to de­ter­min­ing how you will re-in­tro­duce your busi­ness to your cus­tomers? Now is the time to de­cide how your busi­ness will stand out in a sea of same­ness. “Dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion is pow­er.” You’re armed with in­tel­li­gence, hind­sight and in­sight. How will you use these three da­ta sets to scale up your ser­vice ex­cel­lence fore­sight?

We must not be sim­ply good at mak­ing noise as we have in the past about ser­vice ex­cel­lence. We now need to be good at mak­ing the moves to cre­ate a dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed cus­tomer re­al­i­ty. By choice.