Understanding How Your Customers Are Affected By COVID-19 With Survey Tools
What do you need to understand about how your customers are behaving during the pandemic?
- Customer Retail Therapy
- Customer E-commerce Response
- Customer Generational Response
- Customer Gender
- Customer Fulfillment
Businesses that are still running during the pandemic need to have a few tricks up their sleeve to ensure that they remain stable during the global pandemic. This defining event has changed everyone’s way of life forever and the implications will last into the decade. With the rapidly changing situation, understanding your customers will help you change up your marketing strategy. Creating COVID-19 survey tools for your customers allows you to collect the necessary data needed to touch base with the current market. Here’s how you can do it effectively.
Customer Retail Therapy
Once COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, many people responded through panic buying. Medical supplies such as alcohol, sanitizers, masks, and household essentials were out of stock for weeks. It was hard for both brick-and-mortar and e-commerce stores to keep up with demand. This traction is natural as humans will respond to a crisis in different ways. Panic buying is one way to feel like you’re still in control.
With your survey, if you’re a business that manages a service or sells a product, you can integrate the data you’ve collected to help you adjust to the demand. A collection of purchasing patterns, behaviors, and habits will change the way you handle your current customers. This small update will help in navigating the pandemic and future business ventures by exploring the psychology behind customer retail therapy.
This data can be used to strategically upgrade your services and add different products to your business that will satisfy the needs and demands of the customers.
Customer E-commerce Response
E-commerce is more profitable now than ever due to sheer convenience. You may want to include online services for your business as many customers may not be able to go out and purchase items physically. This is not a new concept but if you’re not adjusting, this can prove detrimental to your business. To find out if your customers desire online services or e-commerce, include this in your survey. Their feedback will help you put out an effective online service that your current customers will feel comfortable interacting with.
Customer Generational Response
Each generation has a different response to the pandemic. This is an excellent addition to your survey. Surveys are a quick and easy way to keep behavioral changes across generations recorded. You can then curate different plans and ideas for each generation so no one is left out. Your data on Gen Zs, Millennials, and Boomers will be different depending on your location but you will find a similarity once you collate the data.
Customer Gender
Generational differences are one thing but have you considered gender as well? Lots of people are not allowed to go out and socialize. Each gender has a different response to the pandemic. Some data shows that less than 36% of men are avoiding outside contact compared to women. This can be another strategy to improve your e-commerce business or service. You can add this at the start of your survey and make it entirely inclusive as well if you desire to.
Adding inclusive gender options will shift and move your brand forward into the modern world. There is a ton of diversity out there and many brands are embracing it. You should be able to do so and expand your market to create stronger connections with potential customers.
Customer Fulfillment
Since a lot of customers are cut off from a normal lifestyle, they want to feel fulfilled and have a normal interaction. You can use this to your advantage by changing the way you deliver these expectations. Digital savvy customers will appreciate the effort you put in to deliver them their desired experience. Adding survey questions that tackle what kind of service they want and how they want it executed can easily be added to your survey tool and your website. Simply emailing this to existing customers or having it on the website itself can do wonders. The research you do should be able to highlight the “why” and “how” they’re behaving this way.
Key Takeaway
Due to social distancing, customers are changing the way they interact with businesses. It’s not hard to monitor these changes if you create COVID-19 survey tools for your business. The strategy you create for the pandemic can ensure that you deliver the expectations of your customers and even go beyond that.
By simply adding it to your email marketing, social media marketing, and on your website, you can get accurate data that can withstand the test of the pandemic. This also allows your customers to feel like they’re taking this journey of change with you. The result is hopefully stronger connections, business rebound, and customer loyalty.