Which Habits Have Changed Thanks to COVID?
I was listening to a news broadcast recently during which the Marketing Director (I think that was their title) of a well-known retailer commented that lipstick sales had fallen as people were wearing lipstick less. Why? Because they had to wear masks and there was no point in putting lipstick on only to cover it up again.
This is a fascinating example (unless you’re a cosmetics retailer, of course)of how habits have changed. Another interesting statistic was that people are washing their hair less (although this trend seems to have commenced well before the coronavirus pandemic).
It made me ask: what aspects of peoples’ lives and institutional attitudes may have changed due to COVID? One of the major changes most of us may have seen is that businesses are more relaxed about working from home. Some are even offering it as part of the ‘standard’ employee package instead of as a ‘perk’. At one point, this provoked debate about whether employees who worked from home should be paid less as they no longer had transport and other costs associated with commuting to work. The counterargument (among others) was that employers needed less office space (saving rent) and would consume utilities such as electricity at a lower level and so were themselves saving money.
Many employees were ‘furloughed’ or (worse) made redundant as employers struggled to contain costs. Some found new jobs elsewhere, some started their own businesses, some decided to retire. Those are returning to the workforce are apparently choosier about what they will do for a living and the conditions in which they will work.
One thing we’ve found in our family is that we have to plan more in advance to allow for things not being available in shops as regularly as they used to be before the COVID crisis. We’re also more conscious about the proximity of others and about personal hygiene and sanitising surfaces that we touch. In the country where I work, we still have to scan QR codes when entering business premises and wear masks outdoors at all times.
All these and more are things to which many of us will have adjusted over the last two years. We will have adjusted in terms of:
- Family life.
- Social life.
- Professional life.
- Holiday and shopping habits.
- The way we dress.
- Where are we go out and where, depending on how crowded it is likely to be.
- The way we shop: online or in person?
- Where we look for entertainment: whether a potentially crowded cinema in the same way that we did before coronavirus, or is Netflix the new cinema?
- Zoom meetings or face to face?
Many of us may not realise, but our behaviour has changed. Because this has happened over a relatively lengthy period of some 2 1/2 years the changes may now be imperceptible to us. They are “our new normal“.
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Crisis Management, Customer Care, Leadership, Productivity, Selling, Strategy, Teamwork
Babies and Bathwater?
Some of us will be aware that various airlines in the UK have had to cancel flights as they have insufficient numbers of staff to operate them due to falling ill with COVID.
The other factor is that many staff were let go when COVID first hit. They were either placed on furlough or they were terminated. As a result, those staff went off, re-evaluated their lives, and either set up new businesses, found jobs elsewhere, or decided to quit work.
Even if airlines were able to hire sufficient new numbers of staff, these need to be trained up before they can be deployed. The airlines seem to have made the 'classic mistak' of advertising services for which they had insufficient staff to deliver.
To be fair, the airlines found themselves in a Catch 22 situation. As global demand for travel plummeted due to quarantine restrictions, the global travel and hospitality industries were decimated. Hotels, airlines, guesthouses, restaurants, souvenir shops, tour companies and tour guides will have lost a living. For countries that rely primarily on tourism as a revenue-generator, this spells economic disaster. The point is, many had to offload costs or go under completely. When faced with shedding some jobs to preserve others, the choice is grim.
If one were to use Porter’s ‘5 Forces’ model in this scenario, the following happened:
Number and power of competitive rivals: the travel/hospitality business found itself chasing little/no business. Some hotels were lucky and benefitted from being ‘Isolation Centres’. Airlines changed into cargo carriers to shift PPE and essential goods.
Potential new market entrants: none (unless we count the delivery companies and services that mushroomed).
Bargaining power of suppliers: they were down with COVID as well.
Bargaining power of customers: there were no longer any to bargain with!
Substitute products: Netflix became the new ‘holiday destination’. Shares in the latter increased in price as did the value of the teleconferencing company Zoom.
What triggered them all was an unforeseen (some people call them ‘Black Swan’) event in the shape of a highly contagious and (in the early stages) fatal virus.
The lesson for all of us is clear: hard times come and go. Sometimes we will need more people and sometimes fewer. Our job is to run the cleanest possible organisation with the best trained staff we can have. How would the '5 forces' affect our organisation?
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Crisis Management, Customer Care, Strategy
What is 'Customer Service'?
This is a question that candidates may well be expected to answer in an interview, or that interviewers may wish to ask a candidate for a customer services role. The point of asking the question is to find out how the candidate is likely to treat the people who are the lifeblood of the business.
The questions here are: is ‘customer service’ simply serving customers, is it also about resolving complaints or is it about going the extra mile? What about suppliers of raw materials, services and other inputs’ to our organisation? What about the manner and processes employed?
We also have internal as well as external customers. Colleagues, juniors and managers are customers. How we deal with external customers will often be a reflection of how we deal with our colleagues.
The reverse is also true. Organisations risk forgetting (especially as they get larger and more bureaucratic) is that how they treat their staff also has a direct bearing on how those staff treat customers. Sir Richard Branson was one of the first to spot this. It’s so very easy in a large organisation to view people as ‘numbers’. Of course, we will know our closer colleagues and those with whom we work on a regular basis - their characters strengths and weaknesses.
It takes more effort, however, to remember that a large organisation is composed of teams which are in turn composed of individuals. Managing a small organisation (let alone a large one) is a difficult job for most people. Only the best can do it successfully, and that is why they rise to the top.
We all need to make a conscious effort. We all have pressures on us and are likely to forget that may be others see those pressures.
The more ‘human’ we can be, the more we are likely to treat others as they should be.
Going back to the original question, how should we as leaders set the right example of service to all customers – both internal and external? What is unique about our unique 'customer service'?
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Customer Care, Leadership, Productivity, Strategy, Teamwork
