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If the customer experience for your business hasn’t changed in the last year, you are unusual. In industry to industry, from consumer goods to B2B technology, the distancing, fears, and economic turmoil caused by the coronavirus affect the sales process, customer selection criteria, the way products and services are consumed, and even on it what customer service means. Designing experiences for the coronavirus world is a fundamentally different task than those who were in charge of CX 13 months ago.

An urgent need to keep customers loyal

With the economic and lasting impact of the coronavirus, keeping your customers loyal is more urgent than ever. Your relationships with companies – be they restaurants or IT service providers – may become stronger as a result of the crisis and you would like to be one of the selected partners in the future. Four steps provide a roadmap for this:

1. Determine what changes will be made to the key jobs that will be run

In a crisis, it’s important to understand what underlying motivations – or jobs to do – influence customer behavior and preferences. The job approach is a powerful way to get the deepest thought about your business and how you can be relevant to people in ways that you have hardly considered. If there has ever been time to use these methods, it is now.

Take a look at restaurants, for example – one of the industries most challenged by COVID-19. The task of impressing a date is no longer relevant. Restaurants that are still in operation may be more likely to focus on contemporary jobs, e.g. B. staying healthy while in custody and feeling like a good parent. Take a step back, determine which priorities matter today, and then record which of those jobs might apply to your company. Start by being expansive; You can break down the list later.

2. Map the client’s current journey and your potential leverage points

Next, record your customers’ entire journey to the products and services you offer. Be broad again. For a restaurant, it’s not just about ordering, picking up, and consuming a meal, it’s also about planning what to have and considering other ways to make another night at home special. Look at real customers and their trips, not the composite people you envision. The opportunity for the customer experience lies in the abundance of details. Then draw a detailed map, like the following for a restaurant, in which you consider which tasks to do are relevant for which customers at certain steps on that journey.

The map below shows two customers, Jane and Marc, for simplicity, and uses colored dots to identify which jobs are relevant to whom and when. The red boxes show the pain points that will occur along the way. These are ways for a creative company to build a new customer experience. (You may want to expand the image of the map. At the bottom of this article you will also find a link to a number of detailed working papers on the company’s response to the coronavirus. The map is included in the high resolution Journey Mapping paper in these materials.)

3. Look at new approaches and opportunities

Now that you have the job and travel card and its vulnerabilities, you can use these materials to help brainstorm new approaches that would be relevant in today’s COVID-19 circumstances. Think separately about individual steps in the journey as well as across multiple steps. The above travel card offers a selection of ways a restaurant can be uniquely valuable to customers now, in a way that promotes both short-term sales and a lasting relationship after those memorable times have passed. For example, a restaurant might provide a trivia question or riddle to help people pass the time after ordering, or even provide one with the food so another night at home can be a little more special and fun.

4. Be inspired by what others are doing

When you have established your chances, look outside to see how others approach these challenges. Avoid the mistake many companies make by starting there as it can limit your thinking. However, once you’ve established the compass course you want to aim for based on the jobs, travel, and pain points to be treated, external inspiration can further expand your creativity. For example, Little Dom’s – an Italian restaurant in Los Angeles – offers not only its full menu, but also frozen meals and large-format cocktails to take away. A high-end Seattle restaurant, Canlis, offers a family dinner delivery service that includes a paired bottle of wine. We hope this is a real first for the restaurant industry. The Zinc Café in Los Angeles provides a free roll of toilet paper with every order (while supplies last). Think about how the movements of others in CX can be transferred to your context.

We are all innovators now

If something positive emerges from the coronavirus crisis, we will see how innovative we can be. But innovation needs a goal. Tasks to do and travel mapping together make up that goal – a revamped customer experience that is important for times like this and will be remembered once this crisis is over.

Contribution to Branding Strategy Insider by Stephen Wunker, author of JOBS TO BE DONE: A Roadmap for Customer-Focused Innovation and Charlotte Desprat and Jennifer Luo Law.

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