Communicating in a Post-Pandemic World

Can I tell you a secret? The pandemic made me love video meetings. I wouldn’t mind never talking on the phone again.

Okay, okay…I have and will talk on the phone again, but nowhere near as often as I did pre-pandemic. Video chat and video meetings exploded during COVID-19, and in the process changed business communications forever.

With 41 percent of Americans fully vaccinated and more than half partially vaccinated, businesses are welcoming employees and customers back through their doors. How we work – and how we work together – in a post-COVID world will never be the same. As technology stepped up to keep society functioning in a raging pandemic, telecommuting proved to be viable for so many more employees than we ever believed it was possible. Remote interaction with customers has become easy and almost preferable for both customers and businesses. Even school kids have learned that snow days have sadly become a distant memory.

The challenge for business communicators now is adapting these new ways to connect with customers, employees, partners, vendors and the world, utilizing engagement tools that have quickly replaced obsolete ways of communicating.

What’s really changed is a realization that we can quickly and effectively operate in new ways.

To be fair, the tools have existed for a while now. What’s really changed is a realization that we can quickly and effectively operate in new ways. What the pandemic affirmed is that where there’s a will, there’s a way, and technology has become that way.

So, with employees, customers and others settling into their home offices for good, those charged with the job of communicating important information without the ability to use many traditional tools we’ve always relied on have found they must quickly adapt. Some are wondering where to start.

Conducting a communication audit will reveal how innovative we must be. Not all old tools are obsolete, but we won’t know which ones to keep unless we understand whether or not people are still using them. Likewise, we don’t know how comfortable people are in receiving information through new technologies unless we ask.

Today’s mantra of relying on science applies to communications, too. The science of quantitative and qualitative research as part of a communications audit unveils essential information, giving communicators the ability to create effective communications, selling services and products, reaching out to new audiences, and keeping their businesses functioning.

To use an adage, there is no need to reinvent the wheel, so I look for innovation wherever I can find it. Remember, the highest form of flattery is to copy! Likewise, be generous with your ideas and innovations, and send them out to the world.

The idea doesn’t necessarily need to be to create anew, but to evolve what has worked so that it can be effective for today’s needs.

With so much change happening, new best practices are shifting rapidly. Our efforts to find the right tools to use may be hit and miss right now, but we must ground them in what’s working. The idea doesn’t necessarily need to be to create anew, but to evolve what has worked so that it can be effective for today’s needs.

We can all agree that it has been a challenging year and a half. The disruption we experienced with the pandemic has left so many of us uncertain on how to proceed. But, communicating is what’s kept us going. We can be certain of one thing; how we communicate will make a difference in how we succeed in changing times.

Pandemic Changed Business and Marketing Forever

Wearing masks has become more than a necessity for businesses during the pandemic, and marketing has taken on new methods as a result.

Businesses are back to work after an uncertain year that changed how we work, buy and interact. The implications for marketing have been profound.

The pandemic has been one of those times in history where momentous change happens. Businesses aren’t immune to the seismic shift. In many cases, what we were thinking about and planning for down the road, has exponentially sped up in an effort to survive in an unprecedented market.

If your business survived the shutdown the pandemic brought about, it’s probably because you swiftly pivoted your business model. The decisions for business owners today are:

  • Go back to the way things used to be;
  • Stay with what got them through the shutdown, or;
  • Create a hybrid of both.

Truth is, despite our expectations that once COVID retreated, we would be back to the way things were, that’s not happening. Normal has changed, because COVID changed us.

Yet, the good thing about change is that it prompts innovation. Case in point: we didn’t realize we need services that will shop for and deliver goods to us until going outside of our homes meant exposure to a deadly virus. With that reality, the personal-shopper industry emerged, thrived, and is going strong, even as we emerge from our homes, now vaccinated.

Evolution Results from Pandemic

Businesses that evolved during the shutdown can’t rest on the laurels of success. Customers need information to show how these evolutions make things better for them going forward. One key component in promoting the advantages of the changes made is how businesses and customers now utilize technology.

A good example is health-care delivery. When providers were forced to shift care delivery to telemedicine in 2020, they realized their ability to analyze patients’ needs weren’t diminished. Diagnoses are just as effective and patients like the convenience, comfort, and privacy of being at home, while receiving care.

While the health-care industry was moving in the direction of using telemedicine, the shutdown from business-as-usual pushed providers to immediate adoption. Telemedicine is now an entrenched reality that has changed care-delivery systems. The window of opportunity to increase business with telemedicine exists now. Providers are seizing the opportunity to market the benefits telemedicine provides.

New Marketing Tools

Marketing to existing and potential customers requires tools not used prior to COVID. Apple’s highly stylized product reveal events, with hundreds of people packed in an auditorium, may have changed forever because of COVID, but didn’t stop the company from releasing new products just before the holiday season. Unable to bring high-profile celebrities, business executives and reporters into an auditorium, Apple pivoted to a virtual unveiling, streamed across social media channels. Some presentations were pre-recorded, ensuring flawless performances. Rather than the hands-on events of the past, Apple sent review devices to reporters and social influencers for further news coverage.

The necessity of providing online shopping, take out, curbside delivery and home delivery brought about innovation and massive growth for companies like DoorDash, Instacart, Carvana, Uber Eats, Vroom, Grub Hub and others. The good news? Customers appreciate these innovations, are opening their wallets, and responding with enthusiasm.

When the pandemic took hold, people learned new ways to fulfill their needs. Nowadays, we’re marketing services we never imagined. But the innovations created in a new world of business require modernizations in how we market them.

One marketing tool hasn’t changed, though. Understanding what customers think today is the first step in knowing and evolving how we speak to them.