Reflections on the Customer Experience… Many Companies Blew It During the Pandemic

by Jeff Richards, Founder/CEO -Jeff’s Famous Jerky, 5/5/20

As individuals our everyday normal will likely never be the same again and the companies who put empty words behind the actual needs of their customers at this time; there is no doubt that they will pay the price as years of building customer loyalty has now been lost in a period of only eight weeks.

There will be no business as usual and business owners and executives who have not been using this time to re-think and make changes to their business model …they are going to be left behind. Instead of just being in panic while either being closed or having most sales revenues disappear overnight, it was time to examine every facet of their business, and make changes to their business model with new out-of-the-box strategies to be able to hit the ground running while taking extremely good care of their customers.

There is no doubt the chaos of the pandemic got their attention, but with chaos there is always opportunity. Many business owners and executives went into such intense panic that they lost sight of the most basic principle of business success which is meeting and exceeding the needs of your customers no matter how things change… and indeed they changed

This pandemic brought forth a new opportunity like never in history to exceed the needs of your existing customers and to build the immediate loyalty of new customers.

The banks that chose to limit hours at a time when their customers need easier and faster access to their funds would be no match for a bank that chose to expand their hours. The grocery store who found a way to keep toilet paper in stock every week would be no match for all those who did not. If suddenly every business who advertised cut their advertising and your business expanded their advertising budget… the opportunity to build new customers would be explosive. Sometimes doing the opposite of what your competition is doing is exactly the answer for building new levels of success.

Just sayin’.