2020 was tough for brands, but many found amazing ways to support employees and customers alike. Figuring out how to respond to the pandemic, support customers, and employees is hard enough, let alone thinking about updating your digital strategy – how do you take on one more thing amid unknown territory?
Even before COVID-19, reliance on digital marketing and communications was growing — the pandemic only accelerated this trend.
No matter your industry, your brand is likely facing a host of new complexities: spiking call volumes, closure of brick-and-mortar locations, a newly remote workforce, worried and stressed customers, and customer care agents who are now under much greater pressure from multiple sources.
It’s crucial that your brand adapt its care model to support customers as well as your care agents. But how?
One powerful way to support both customers and care agents is to harness the power of artificial intelligence. Chatbots are one of the most popular options for today’s top brands, and consumers are showing an increasing appreciation for their services; 53% say that they don’t care whether a bot or a human resolves their issue, as long as it gets resolved.
Chatbots and other AI cannot replace the approachability and intuitive response of human agents, but they can help automate your digital care process, deflecting inquiries away from your contact center and prioritizing the most important ones. This lightens agent workload, allowing your brand to provide better customer care without increasing personnel, even during times of crisis like COVID-19.
Expectations for customer service don’t decrease during a crisis, so it’s important to make sure that your system can handle increases in volume without breaking down.
Legacy systems like call centers and asynchronous chat platforms won’t cut it in 2020; you need a more flexible solution that will help you manage crises without overwhelming your staff. Modern chat, automation, and advanced workflows are worth the investment precisely because they can do just that.
The definition of marketing is moving goods and services from the source of tools, channels, and mechanics to the consumer, but most marketers haven't adapted for digital - and that's a BIG problem.
If things changed quickly before, they’ve moved at the speed of light during COVID-19. Your brand has to keep up. Many brands start with the goal of disrupting and standing out, but that’s not always the best strategy, especially during a crisis.
For digital content of any kind, one of your first priorities should be sensitivity. Disruption is great, but a faux pas or misstep on social media can be catastrophic.
That’s why, as soon as COVID-19 hit, top brands cut down on images of crowds and content about spring and summer activities, focusing instead on responding to the pandemic. Timelines in April and May filled with posts about how brands were offering help to their customers — and, of course, Tiger King and sourdough.
Sustainability and fashion appear to be on opposing catwalks destined for collision. Fashion is a $2.5 trillion industry, producing 10% of global carbon emissions, 20% of global wastewater, and vast biodiversity loss. Consumers are demanding change, forcing sustainability in fashion as a requirement, not a trend.
Agility is one of the digital marketer’s most important tools, and brands that displayed it this year have done well.
So, how can you craft top-notch content during a crisis?
Listen.
The best social media and brand teams know their limits; they know they can’t hear about an issue once and craft a perfect response.
The best teams don’t start on their response to crises by writing; they start by taking the local, regional, and national pulse. They use social listening tools to create deep, incisive analysis about the conversation surrounding whatever issue they’re talking about — and only then do they write.
Your brand should do the same. Use data from the latest trends to inform your content, assuming consumers will scrutinize every word. For example, when posting, use social listening technology to stay up-to-date on real-time conversations.
Above all, remember that your customers can be valuable advocates and sources of information. If you’re unsure of your brand’s place in the current social media landscape, use social listening to see brand mentions on social media, or use an organic post to invite feedback about what kind of content customers want to see.
B2B marketers now engage with more decision-makers, across more channels, and more deeply into the buying process than ever before. To be successful, marketers need to simplify the buyer’s journey - which is the superpower of ABM.
As much as artificial intelligence and machine learning can help your care team, an online brand community is an indispensable part of many brands’ support strategies. These communities, typically hosted on the brand’s website, are places where customers, employees, and support staff can:
Communities are much more than just customer support channels. They’re also scalable in ways that contact centers simply aren’t — and that’s a crucial characteristic during times of crisis.
They’re not vulnerable to the same levels of strain as contact centers because as the number of people asking questions grows, so does the number of people responding. Community members can answer questions for each other, decreasing the amount that employees need to do to help customers.
Community growth is therefore not just sustainable, but organic, as it’s driven by real customer need.
No one knows for certain when (or whether) things will return to normal. Complicating this is the fact that states and countries set their own regulations, so reopening a physical presence can be a logistical nightmare, and, as we’ve already seen, reopening will not necessarily go in a straight line as infection rates ebb and flow.
The best brands communicate openly and honestly with their customers and create long-term loyalty through that authentic, human-centered connection. Make them feel heard, respected, and appreciated, and you’ll create customers for life.
