Customer expectations have drastically shifted as a result of the coronavirus crisis, Kate Carnell, the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, said in a recent MyBusiness webcast.
“What we expect from businesses has changed. We’re expecting levels of digitisation that we didn’t expect before.
“The way businesses communicate with us has fundamentally changed. This isn’t going back to what it was,” Ms Carnell stressed.
As such, she urged businesses to ponder on these changes by consulting with their customers as a means to review the success of some the changes that have been implemented over the previous months.
“We’ve got to focus on what that looks like, but to talk to our customers about what they’re expecting, what they like, the bits of the changes we’ve made that they would like us to keep,” Ms Carnell said.
The ombudsman reminded businesses that in reality, COVID isn’t going away.
“We have to understand that COVID isn’t going away. It’s going to continue for a while yet. And until really, we’ve got vaccination pretty broadly based in our community.
“And for some businesses, until that happens, until there’s really global vaccination, the businesses aren’t going to come back. I’m thinking travel agents, tour guides, people involved in the airline industry, major event operators.
“There’s a whole range of businesses that will continue to do it tough for a while yet,” Ms Carnell concluded.
