Collaborate with customers to co-create success

Restrictions on business as usual are transforming customer preferences and expectations. With traditional ways of doing business currently unavailable, customers are turning to digital alternatives. Trends towards online business—already in progress before the onset of COVID-19—are now accelerating. 

Consumers are looking to digital platforms to deliver what they need quickly and conveniently. Many shoppers—even those who may have once resisted digital options—are now embracing various on-demand platforms to fulfill basic needs. Grocery and food delivery services have enjoyed a boost in the number of users, as have media streaming and online education services. Some companies, such as Amazon and Instacart, have been forced to scale up quickly while others—in hospitality and transportation for example—have had to scale back in the face of uncertainty. 

Meanwhile, enterprise customers have adapted quickly to shelter-in-place mandates, increasing demand for products and services—especially from software companies providing cloud-based connectivity tools and systems. Software companies have also concurrently had to find creative ways to connect with enterprise customers virtually to maintain ongoing engagement during the pandemic and beyond. Conferences and in-person meetings, the lifeblood of many B2B sales teams, have been canceled or moved online. Software providers have also had to be sensitive to the economic pressures their customers face, especially in some industries.

Study your customers—they've changed

The extent of customer impact from COVID-19 varies by segment, industry, geography and market position. Regardless, customers now take priority over all other activities for software and digital platform companies. Work with enterprise clients to understand and help navigate their distinctive challenges, whether staying afloat, meeting current needs, preparing for the future or the entire gamut. Determine what tools and technology might work best to assist them in each situation, from price stability to talent deployment to cloud connectivity. Deploy data and analytics to help predict buying behavior and track new customer segments, renewed engagement from existing customers and changing customer expectations. Armed with that knowledge, invest appropriately to reignite engagement with former customers while also scaling up to meet demand for new products based on evolving customer priorities.

Top takeaways

1. Assess customer risk by segment, geography and market position.
2. Address customer needs using appropriate tools and technology for each situation.
3. Deploy data and analytics to track changing behavior and new customer segments.
4. Invest to reignite customer engagement and scale up to meet new demand. 

Expand the boundaries of your sales team

Now more than ever, customers expect timely solutions that fit their needs. Some sales teams are underutilized in the current environment due to reduced enterprise spending. Implement digital training to help them address evolving customer priorities and update their skills and competencies. Develop a culture that keeps remote sales teams invested, connected and engaged to curb turnover and burnout.  And provide real-time feedback. Organize them by industry to better understand and address the challenges customers face—and innovate to provide business value for customers. Build long-term relationships by focusing on customer needs rather than sales quotas.

Stay connected with channel partners, too, and prioritize how best to help them. Treat your most valuable channel partners as you would your most valuable customers—they are an extension of your sales force. Offer valuable resellers access to the tools and resources available to your sales teams. Virtually meet your ecosystem players (partners of your channel partners, such as their developer network) where they are by offering online versions of conferences, events and certification at reasonable rates.

Top takeaways

1. Implement digital upskilling training to bridge gaps in understanding of customer priorities.
2. Stay connected to channel partners to inform innovation and enhance customer value.
3. Invest in ecosystem players through online training and events at reasonable rates.

Adopt customer success models

Customer success teams focus exclusively on the customer’s business goals instead of the traditional sales focus on products, features and upgrades. They function as business partners for the customer’s entire business cycle. Salesforce, for example, is building a customer success organization dedicated to ensuring customers have the right products and services to maximize their business value. These customer success professionals work as part of in-house teams with customers—often onsite but more virtually of late—to advise them in real time on how best to tailor tools and systems for their specific growth needs. Companies with fewer resources could train their sales teams to use a hybrid approach, applying the practices and incentives that focus on maximizing business value for customers rather than traditional sales metrics. For consumer platforms, adjust your expectations for your customer success team using rating criteria better aligned with customers’ changing needs.

Top takeaways

1. Focus on the customer’s business goals.
2. Function as a business partner to customers by advising them in real time.
3. Revisit rating criteria used to evaluate customer success teams for alignment with customer’s goals.

Push the limits of innovation

The response of digital platforms such as Amazon and Google to the current public health crisis has offered consumers a renewed appreciation of their capabilities. Customers are giving companies the license to develop new offerings, products, features and more, recognizing that they stand to gain from these innovations as long as certain privacy measures are in place. The time is right to push the boundaries of product, platform and digital prowess; without innovation there is no path forward. Invest in talent and capabilities to support these efforts. Develop a close connection between engineers, product managers, field sales teams and channel partners—those in the field will have the earliest indicators of changing customer needs, particularly in a time where forecasting is difficult. Facebook, for example, is offering a new service that allows merchants (many of them small businesses) to sell products directly through its platform, enlisting third-party partners to handle back-end functions.

Top takeaways

1. Push forward with developing new offerings, products and features.
2. Communicate the customer benefits of each innovation.
3. Underscore privacy measures. 

Authentically elevate your brand

Purpose matters, as tech, media and telecom (TMT) companies acknowledged in PwC’s COVID-19 CFO survey: They are almost twice as likely as all sectors (28% versus 16%) to increase their philanthropic commitment in the wake of the pandemic—and to sustain this level of commitment for the foreseeable future. And amid the protests and conversations around race prevalent across the country, software and digital platform companies are uniquely possessed of the scale and technological know-how to live their purpose, partnering with other organizations to lift up underrepresented groups and communities in need. Microsoft, Uber and Grindr, among others, are leading by example. Build your brand by supporting essential services. Leverage your strengths as a platform to provide opportunities for customer donations. 

Top takeaways

1. Leverage tech know-how to live out purpose.
2. Partner with other organizations to serve communities in need.
3. Offer opportunities for customer philanthropy.