The Covid-19 pandemic has undoubtedly shaped many aspects of society and day-to-day life in recent years, and it has had a notable impact on the strategies that companies are using to best engage their consumers. As with any major shock to the way we do business the effects of the pandemic have been varied and far reaching, and are not always easy to fully understand. But anyone who seeks to market their products in the Post-Covid world we now live in, must strive to understand these effects and adapt their strategies for customer engagement in order to avoid falling behind the competition.
So how has Covid changed the strategies for customer engagement? And how can companies best adapt to these changes? Although it would be different to even scratch the surface of this topic in this short article, here are a few key takeaways that will be relevant to any company seeking to market their products in the current climate:
1. Digital is king
Although the trend towards increased digitization of customer engagement channels had been had been around before the pandemic, 2020 marked a sharp and dramatic acceleration further in this direction. According to the Twilio State of Customer Engagement report in 2021 (Twilio – Twilio’s Annual State of Customer Engagement Report Finds Digital Engagement Is Key to Business Survival in a Post-Pandemic World), 96 percent of enterprises reported that failing to digitize customer engagement would have negatively impacted their business and 95 percent expected to increase or maintain their investment in digital customer engagement after the pandemic. And according to the report they released the following year (2022 Twilio State of Customer Engagement Report), these investments are paying meaningful dividends, with a 70 percent average revenue increasing among companies that had invested in digital customer engagement over the last two years. In this post pandemic world, there is no more room to ignore or neglect customer engagement in the digital sphere, and it must be a top priority for any company that seeks to reach consumers.
2. Video is the medium of the future
Whether it’s zoom calls with friends or chatting with coworkers around the world over Google Meet, the pandemic has made us increasingly comfortable with communicating over video. Video engagement provides a more personal experience than engagement through solely text or image based channels, and in a world where the line between video and in-person interaction has become increasingly blurred, it’s easier to reach customers through video than ever before. And although the world is mostly opened up by now, it’s clear that the trend towards increasing video communication is here to stay, making customer engagement through video even more crucial than it was in pre-2020 years.
3. Personalization is no longer optional
The usage of data analytics to help personalize your engagement strategy based on the customer has accelerated since 2020, to the point where it’s no longer optional for large companies who want to stay competitive. During the 2020 crisis, many companies were forced to increasingly emphasis personalization in order to make the best of shoestring marketing budgets and better reach customers who were locked down in their homes (Three Personalization Imperatives During the Crisis | BCG). And now that personalization has become the norm, customers are increasingly growing to expect it. Although it may not be feasible for smaller companies who lack the necessary budgets or data output, some sort of personalized engagement strategy is becoming increasingly mandatory for any company that seeks to compete in the big leagues.
4. Artificial Intelligence is something to keep an eye on
With the rise of more personalized and data driven marketing, larger companies are increasingly turning towards artificial intelligence to help drive their consumer engagement. As it grows harder and harder for human capabilities to process and respond to the sheer volume of data and consumer input necessary for a robust customer engagement strategy, AI is likely to be a powerful weapon in many companies’ arsenals, with Microsoft even predicting (How AI is powering the future of the customer experience (microsoft.com)) that by 2025, as many as 90 percent of customer interactions will be through channels supported by AI. Although the story of Artifical Intelligence and it’s effects on customer engagement is far from complete, it’s something that almost every company would be wise to pay attention to in the coming years.