Customer & people engagement: the commercial challenge of Covid-19

The questions

With the lockdown in the months of March, April and May, companies missed out on any opportunity to make customer calls, with often serious impacts on their turnover. In this new scenario, salespeople immediately went to work to ramp up their use of alternative methods to maintain relationships with their customers, from more traditional channels (email and phone calls) to digital ones (messaging, online calls, web conferences).

An istant survey conducted on 236 Italian companies reveals how the use of alternative channels made it possible to maintain relationships with 69.2% of customers who could no longer be contacted in person. That said, only 15.6% of the interviewees diversified interaction methods by utilizing all five of the channels in the study (e-mail, telephone, messaging, online calls, web conferences). Specifically, on average only 2.81% of the sales people interviewed used alternative means of contact. This limited capacity to utilize all the different options available to connect with customers constitutes a problem, dramatically confirming what we already knew from previous studies done pre-lockdown. In fact, the digitalization rate for sales networks was medium-to-low for most companies; digital channels were among the least often used; and the low rate of adoption was (and still is) a worrying symptom that sales networks are not paying enough attention to new technological tools.

But the demanding situation we are facing today can serve to spur on digitalization for networks and sales processes, evidencing alternative methods for managing commercial relationships, and laying the groundwork for recovery. This last consideration is one of the points that garnered the greatest consensus among CEOs and front line managers from nine multinationals. These were the participants at a virtual round table hosted by CEL at SDA Bocconi on 21 April 2020 with the theme: Covid-19 Emergency Landscape.

The purpose of the meeting was to create a space where participants could share their experiences, to ultimately come up with replicable managerial strategies and actions, as well as best practices that respond to two basic questions:

• How can we maintain customer relationships during lockdown and social distancing?
• How can we work on motivating and engaging people?

Fieldwork

Taking this and other issues as our starting point for the Covid-19 Emergency Landscape virtual meeting, what emerged were eight interdependent spheres where winning managerial actions could be successfully implemented. Accelerating digitalization. In both the sales and customer networks, this is essential to help customers with support functions and remote assistance. What’s more, clear priorities must be established that acknowledge the disparate levels of digital readiness among diverse customers and different members of the sales team. Companies also need to redistribute resources, for example, investing in digital channels and e-commerce, and encouraging the skills development that digitalization processes require. Maintaining constant contact with customers and listening to their problems. These are indispensable processes to ensure customers have clear and continuative points of reference, to capture their needs (traditional, new and emerging ones), to offer services that align with their real priorities (for instance, guaranteed delivery, information in real time on market trends, tax advice and financial consulting to support recovery, and so forth), to support skills development (webinars), and to give a show of solidarity (planning round tables, traditional or digital communication campaigns). In this sense, companies should revisit customer interaction processes in terms of frequency and duration of customer contact and the use of digital tools. Beyond this, internal processes call for revamping as well, specifically speeding up decision-making, shoring up customer service, and updating sales materials. Envisioning and innovating what to offer customers. This is the key to discovering new business opportunities. Listening and keeping up constant contact with customers also becomes a way to keep collaborators engaged and motivated, getting them involved in analyzing and developing new services, processes and promotional initiatives. Then envisioning and innovating taps into their creativity, which serves to come up with ways to adapt the activities of the sales team for contending with the emergency, smart working, and recovery planning. Donate and show the company cares with tangible gestures of solidarity during these critical times. The caring role that the company plays should be extended to customers and employees, responding to their need for safety and protection. This might mean providing personal protective equipment (masks, gloves, sanitizing products), implementing systems for monitoring people in certain spaces, or coming up with forms of financial support. Organizations have to set their sights on becoming a touchstone for the community and a point of pride for employees, building an image, a corporate reputation and a brand reputation that safeguards - in a concrete way - the common good along with the wellbeing of customers and employees. This project also represents an important investment in the identity and sense of belonging of employees, to show the surrounding community their commitment and dedication to their customers, and ultimately to establish a long-lasting relationship based on trust. In such challenging times as these, maintaining relationships with the market and achieving business targets becomes extremely difficult, with the sales force very likely feeling the most intense pressure. So now it is necessary – indispensable even - to offer material support to the sales network by adopting the following strategies: revising sales commission systems for indirect networks, creating novel incentive schemes on new products or services, getting people involved in scheduling vacation time to strike a balance between individual needs and corporate needs, utilizing wage guarantee funds integrated with coverage from the company, and guaranteeing a full salary to direct sellers. Lastly, carefully managing the present situation can also represent a takeoff point for managing the future. But in order for this to happen, it will become increasingly critical for companies to be selective, upgrading their level of analysis to focus targeted action for launching new products and services and for investing in customers and channels.

Looking ahead

Focusing on building long-term relationships with customers and employees: this seems to be a prerequisite to truly transform a moment of crisis into a time of tremendous growth and deep renewal.

The major challenge of post-Covid-19 is to anticipate what aspects of today’s exceptional circumstances will become the norm, and the extent to which this will happen, both in terms of relationships with customers as well as company personnel, in particular the sales force.

• Will customers want to go back to face-to-face interactions? Or will they turn permanently to digital channels? How many customers will move one way or the other? Which ones will they be?
• What about the impact of digital acceleration and smart working on the activities and the roles of sales people?
• What strategies will companies need to adopt to fuel the drive toward innovation we are seeing in this period of crisis?