Customer Experience within the "New Normal"
“The longer you wait, the harder it is to produce outstanding customer service.” - William H. Davidow, Author and Venture Investor
Back in the late 1990’s I practically lived on an airplane. I was the National Accounts Manager for a mutual fund company with the responsibility of developing and maintaining relationships with brokerage firms all over the U.S. Because of that job, I had a good deal of experience navigating my way through airports around the country. Before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, an experienced business traveler could return a rental car 30 minutes before a flight was scheduled to leave, then breeze through the metal detectors and X-Ray machines of airport security without needing to show a boarding pass until reaching a flight’s gate. Interestingly, for the most recent flight I had taken which was in December 2019, my experience wasn’t too different – thanks to having been cleared through the government’s TSA pre-check program and by having my electronic boarding pass readily available on my mobile phone, winding my way from entrance to gate was fairly easy. Put another way, the customer experience (CX) of my last journey through the airport was pretty good.
However, 18 years ago after the horror that was 9/11, getting on an airplane wasn’t anywhere close to easy. First, after the attacks, it took several weeks before many people felt comfortable enough to start flying again. Then, once travelers returned to the airports, whether it was due to a lack of technology, data or preparedness, the newly-minted Transportation Security Administration was simply incapable of efficiently processing people through airport security checkpoints. Using 20th Century methods to deal with a 21st Century problem meant travelers would need to follow new procedures like showing their ID, taking off shoes and articles of clothing, and separating their laptop computers from their bags for scanning. Thanks to the new requirements and many passengers being unfamiliar with them, the time to clear security could take two to three hours. In the early period after 9/11, there was a general understanding of the reasons behind a slower pre-boarding screening. But only a few months later, understanding turned to frustration and anger as passengers were “randomly” selected for more thorough screenings, or travelers missed flights due to perceived inefficiencies. Long story short, for the next couple of years CX was pretty lousy and employee engagement (EE) for the TSA agents and airline employees was fairly low - and it took several years of process development and refinement before the efficiencies returned.
This week in select states around the country, businesses that were closed due to “stay at home” orders issued to prevent the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic have started to re-open. Those businesses will start to learn how best to serve their customers in this time of social distancing, much like the essential businesses that have continuously stayed open have done. So far I’ve witnessed a lot of improvisation – masking tape arrows on the floors of grocery stores encouraging one way travel down aisles, “boxes” of masking tape on the floor to help people stay apart while waiting in line for the check-out register, and of course, lots of Zoom meetings.
There’s clearly a parallel between post 9/11 behavior and how we should expect people to act over the coming months. Generally following a crisis, our fellow human beings have a lot of patience and empathy when things do not operate as smoothly as they once did. Unfortunately, however, along with people's memories of the depth of the pain that was once felt, their tolerance begins to fade and their expectations begin to rise. If you own or operate a business, following are just a few of the questions you should expect to address in the coming weeks and months:
How will you provide assurance to both customers and employees that your place of business is regularly cleaned and sanitized?
Will you require a quick temperature check or some sort of health certificate before allowing customers and employees to enter your premises?
Will you provide face masks on a complimentary basis or for a small fee?
How will you address bottlenecks to entry created by new safety procedures?
Will you add hand sanitizing stations in many places around your premises?
Will you provide assurance to customers that all employees who handle items for purchase have been screened? For example, in a restaurant, food travels from delivery person to food preparation team to server before being delivered to the customer.
Will you reconfigure seating to address social distancing? If so, how will you handle couples or families of different sizes who wish to sit together?
How will you address situations when your business’s new safety requirements are not being followed by either a customer or an employee?
How will you manage the employees who do not want to come to your place of business regularly?
How will you manage the employees who prefer in-person meetings to video ones, or generally desire an office environment?
How will you deliver superior CX and EE as expectations rise?
As I wrote, in the short-term customers and employees will be very understanding as they emerge from their homes and first dip their toes into the pool of the “new normal”. Some of the above questions have very simple solutions. However, many others, both on the list and unnamed, require much more thought, strategic planning and probably some design thinking. Let’s get to work in re-designing great CX and EE now ahead of the expectations that are to come, because truly thoughtful leaders are already considering how to provide positive experiences in the “new normal” environment.