One step forward, two steps back: The Covid-19 outbreak is probably giving a new depth of meaning to the well-known expression. Coronavirus pandemic is a human tragedy and has a growing impact on the global economy. Most people have lost their jobs and therefore, are looking for ways to reduce their regular expenditure. They are making a list of services and products deemed superfluous and sending them off to the slashing square.

Is your company an exemption from the list of expenses your customers are planning to cut down?

The truth is, we are currently in the middle of a crisis and everybody (if not all) are looking for ways to cut on cost without adversely affecting their normalcy state. Most organisations have reduced their staff capacity by two-third, with others being offered an opportunity to work from home at reduced payment rates. Therefore, as a business, you have to find innovative ways of surviving the pandemic.

Below are some of the techniques you can implement to boost customer experience and consequently avoid being dumped at the chopping square by customers.

First, it’s essential to note that, not all customers can be stopped from canceling your product or service despite the heights of experience they are served. Below are some of the ways you can use to stop or at least slow the bleeding.

we explain some of the reasons as to why managers should evaluate and baseline their digital experience even after the crisis.

Downgrade essential plans

Most organisations offer a multi-tiered pricing plan. To keep customers during economic strains, organisations should offer downgrade plans to save on costs incurred by their clients.

For instance, there are those customers who are likely to be comfortable with features and reduced functionality of the lowered pricing plan. To cater to a majority of your customer base, you may offer the same features and functionality at a flat rate for every customer or offer a lower-priced plan.

Either way, it gives customers a luring option to downgrade and still get the services other than making the ultimate decision of canceling.

Offer to postpone or skip the payment

For example, my gym sent me a surprise message last week. They will continue charging me for now, but every month I pay without attending sessions, they’ll be rolling over my plan to the next month free-off-charge.

A similar option that most other companies opt for is postponing payments. As an organisation, you can reach out to your clients and tell them that they can postpone the payment by one or two months if they are overwhelmed with bills during with this health crisis.

This is essential in retaining customers’ contracts without coercing an immediate payment from them.

Provide them with an alternative to pause for sometime

 Just as it was mentioned earlier, it’s quite impossible to stop all clients from canceling your products or services.  But before they eliminate your brand from their budget, you need to entice them with an option to pause your product for a while.

There’s a reason why the clients chose your services or products, and even as they think about getting rid of it, they still use it at that given moment.

Currently, your customers are in a state of panic and therefore, you need to help ease the situation by lowering their expense.  No one knows when the virus will be completely contained, and this makes customers even more anxious.  So, instead of forcing a service down their throats, that will eventually chase them from your company, you’d better provide them with the option of hitting the pause button at any time. As for now, they may not be using and paying for your products, but down the road, they’ll stabilise and get back onboard.  That way, they don’t have to cancel, but just pause for a while.

Up your proactive communication game plan

This is not the time to bury your heads down in the sand.  With approximately 6 months into this devastating crisis, customers are already reaching with cancellation requests or cost reduction. As an expert in customer centric leadership, we guide every corporate or business entity to respond quickly to these requests. Be reliable and efficient.

Be proactive and come up with innovative ways of reducing customer expenditure without them having to cut your product or service from their list entirely.

An input of a little friction to the cancellation flow might help.

Although initially it may seem as unethical but adding friction to your cancellation period gives you time to engage customers to evaluate your value exchange and negotiate a deal that mutually benefits both parties. For example, instead of a single click, the process may involve speaking with a member of your customer retention team as part of the cancellation process.

These are unusual times and if you behave normally, the pandemic will treat your business abnormally. Hard times call for survival techniques for your business to adapt to the new norm and way of life.