By : Meenal Jain
In the last two years, Covid 19 has wreaked havoc all over the world, affecting a variety of industries. The case of India is no exception. Many businesses across the country have experienced supply chain disruptions and decreased demand for their products and services. Although Covid-19 is affecting all business, smaller business that do not have sufficient funds to survive are facing higher risk. There has been loss in consumers as the personal interaction is been missing.
The HEART framework helps an organization that only outlasts pandemic like Covid-19. But also develops a basis on which a company should work to maintain customer relationships and its management.
It is Humanize Your Company, educateabout change, Assure Stability, Revolutionize Offerings, Tackle the Future. It outlines what to say to customers — and what not to say — during prolonged crisis. It focuses on informing current and future customers about your company’s strategy for assisting them and offering additional value. We must create a value to the consumers so that they feel emotionally connected with the brand and that helps to increase customer value.
Be pro-active in making decisions and if there are any changes in the timings, staff reductions, facility closure, must promptly inform on all the social media websites. It is important to pay attention to the consumers pain-points. Whenever there is necessity, the need for invention arises. We must always provide value addition to the consumers. They must be satisfied while purchasing the product.
Humanize your company: This emphasizes that the primary objective of a business should be to provide the best service to its customers, not just to make money.
Educate about change: This element explains how the changes during such times should be communicated to its customers by an organization. The company during such unusual times can make sure that only its employees but also its customers should be made aware about their operations. The customers should be aware about how their organization is dealing with pandemic. For example, when curbs were lifted after first lockdown in India, companies like McDonald and Dominios made sure that the no contact delivery method of working is communicated clearly to its customers.
Assure stability This element creates trust between the customer and the organization they are connected with. The company at times like this should make sure the value they were delivering pre-pandemic is not hampered during and post-pandemic. For instance, Ola a Cab aggregator company, assured its customers that the company will make sure the rides are completely safe by adhering to the Covid protocols.
Revolutionize your offerings: This explains how an organization can make use of the existing problem and work towards discovering the opportunities. For instance, Dmart which is an offline store but during pandemic it came up with the online feature that delivers items to its customer’s door steps.
Tackle the future: This explains that the company should ensure its customers about the future possibilities in the Company and cultivate goodwill with past customers. It is about the customer-centric approach of the organization towards consumers.
The above HEART framework will help most of the organization to combat the situations like the current pandemic. This framework will also help the companies even after the pandemic and helps in building long lasting relations with the customers. In Summary, The benefit of the framework is retaining the old customers and acquiring new customers during and post pandemic