Adapting Your Omnichannel Strategy to the New Reality

For today’s post, we reached out to Voyislav Stojanovic-Osinsky, Zigurat’s professor of Global MBA in Digital Business, to ask him to share his recommendations for an omnichannel strategy that would work in the new reality. COVID-19 came and radical changes in customer behavior are here to stay: Welcoming this new normal and adapting our view is the best way to prevail.Do you remember what was the first thought as an individual that came to your mind the day before (and after) the lockdown because of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic? Probably questions like: How can I buy the groceries? Where -and how- can I make my daily workout? What kind of protective mask should I buy? Can I order pizza for dinner? Probably the answers to those questions should be “Go online”. COVID-19 outbreak accelerated the need to go Digital, to research, buy, and get some advice using digital tools. Be happy! You are not the only one, you are the reflection of a “new” customer. You drew a new journey as a customer, you discovered new ways to interact with companies offering you products or services. Maybe this can be our starting point: You run the Marketing Department of your company and your boss came up with the request: What is our Post-COVID-19 marketing strategy? Nice question, but it would be even nicer to have the answer. It will take a bit of work but it can be funnier because the answer to this question generates more questions.First the first, we need to know: Where are we now? What is our Situation Awareness? What are we offering to our customers? Are they responding the way we were expecting? Do we meet their needs? All went digital? Or do we still need a physical “Window” so our sutlers won’t lose the “touch” with our company? Those are questions we need to do within the organization.We need to discover new touchpoints where we can reinforce the contact with our customers. We need to discover if we have a touchpoint that can help us to establish more proximity to our customers: Are they more willing to have a WhatsApp Chat? Or maybe a Zoom call in the afternoon to clarify doubts, or perhaps we discover that social media became more used for our settlers. Those discoveries can help us to re-map our customer journey and detect more opportunities for recurring revenues of more happy customers. Consulting firm Deloitte shows the way we can discover new customer touchpoints after the COVID-19 outbreak. Here are some well know customer’s touchpoints, go ahead! discover if you have more for your company and your industry:New normal requires new scenarios and new ways of working, so getting your organization ready for these changes requires having the proper insights within your organization and establish a solid leadership. Also, there is a critical aspect to be taken into consideration: Are we agile enough to achieve the new strategy?Execution plays a critical role. A good strategy without an execution plan can be turned into dust, so once you draw your strategy, the next exercise is to understand the level of agile we and the level of resources we have to make the proper execution.We need to count on the proper KPIs to measure up the level of success of our strategy. Do we have this crisis working for our strategy? Are those KPIs business-oriented? In other words, you can build your strategy in 4 focus Areas:1. What is their “New Normal”? 2. New habits = New needs 3. Caring beyond selling 4. What happens next: Reimagining your “new customer”1. Can you adapt your product? 2. Can you simplify it? 3. Do you have new ways to sell it? 4. Do you have something else to offer?1. How’s your sales team adapting? 2. All has become digital but let's keep it human 3. Caring for your sales team is caring for your customers too 4. Setting new goals: New KPIs?1. What can be your new way of doing business? 2. Framework checking 3. Cultural change: facing a big challenge 4. How agile is your organization?COVID-19 crisis showed us that there’s no “Silver Bullet” to attack problems, so the best way to assume this is to be open to fine-tuning our execution so we can build a solid omnichannel model open to new challenges.

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Voyislav Stojanovic-Osinsky Professor of the Global MBA in Digital Business National Business Development Manager at AXA Salud