Over the last few months, brands ranging from manufacturing companies to grocery stores like Publix to start-ups like Beautiful Curly Me, have quickly innovated to adjust to the new demands and customer preferences amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Rewiring established systems and pivoting in a new direction is no easy task, but almost seems unavoidable in today’s business climate. Since most companies are currently being put to the test and need to make a change, we asked innovation experts Kacie Lett, the SVP of Strategy, and Robert Berris, the SVP of Innovation, from the innovation and growth firm Three Five Two for their thoughts on how brands can best pivot procedures during a difficult time. 

How can brands pivot during a difficult time?

The short answer is: don’t. Or, at least not before you speak to the most important decision maker of your organization: the customer. 

To be clear, a pivot is a wholesale change to a business model, whereas an iteration is an adaptation to one. In this moment in time, as our systems are undoubtedly pressure tested at work and home, there is more opportunity than ever to innovate through iteration.  Given the unknown long-term impact of this pandemic, many of these “now” iterations may be here to stay. 

Here’s looking at you, contactless delivery and remote car buying.

Always design for people.

Speak with your customers. It sounds (and is) simple, yet many companies let their customer become a mythical creature, too precious to touch. 

Human-centered design is a core part of Three Five Two’s DNA; and something we bring into our partner companies every single day. As businesses mature, it may feel like:

1. We know our customer so well, that we don’t need to talk to them anymore; or 

2. It will look bad if we have to ask our customers what they want.

In either case, we forget that we’re in the business of designing for people. And people change, as the world around them does. And right now, the entire world is adapting to change.

So, what is the best course of action?

Start right now. 

The greatest threat to your business is the unknowable unknowns. Right now, your customers are experiencing something unique to them and you don’t know exactly how you can best support them, because you haven’t asked. 

Whether you connect with them over Zoom to ask broad, open-ended questions, or you send a survey to a large group of people to start, there has never been a better time to speak with your customers. Now is the time to meet them where they are and design the experience they need to interact with your company.

Now, just do it.    

Start with a 3-question email survey and send it out to a specific segment of your customer base. Look at your email open rate to determine the size you need to send in order to return ~1,000 responses. These quantitative(ish) methods could result in you uncovering your next best way to ride out this challenging time. Here’s a few tips of where to start: 

1. Be human:

   Ask them to provide some detail about how they are doing. Find out what their unmet needs, pains and desires are. How companies show up now will have lasting effects on customer acquisition and loyalty, long term.

2. Understand their reality:

   Ask how your business shows up in their life, find out if your business is considered essential. If not, ask why. In order to solve something, you need to understand why the solution is important - how will it serve your clients or how will it contribute to your company as a whole... Don’t spend time reinventing parts of your business if it isn’t a pain reliever or a gain creator for your audience. 

3. Find out what’s missing:

   Ask the audience what is missing in their life that they wish a business could solve during this time.  Regardless of your business, find out the top concerns your consumers are facing. There’s value in problems to be solved. Uncover what’s missing for them and use that as inspiration to determine your company’s next course of action.

4. Identify themes and patterns:

   Unpack what the data is saying and look for patterns and themes that consistently show up. Based on the data, you’ll have to take a few leaps and develop hypotheses to further test.

5. Select 5 respondents that represent a bigger group with pain:

   Reach out to them to have a deeper discussion, and set up a video call (Zoom and Miro are our go-to remote collaboration tools right now). Make sure to come in with some simple concepts to put in front of your audience and test to see how they react. Consider that these concepts are simply stimulus to address an underlying need. You don’t have to immediately solve it, rather you have to learn if there’s value in solving their needs.
   

Test. Start Small. Avoid Perfection. Within a few days of your survey and initial 1:1 customer interviews, you’ll have some sense of how you might solve your customer’s needs. While it often takes a few rounds of research, we would advise testing your concepts in the real world as fast as you can. Don’t strive for perfection and start small. Use the customer feedback as a cycle to evolve your ideas and determine if it’s worth iterating your business. Together, you can have a dialogue to co-design an iteration that removes the risk of COVID. 

Necessity is the mother of invention.

The renaissance arose from the dark ages, bringing art, literature, astronomy, philosophy, global exploration and industrialization. 

We’re already seeing a new world emerge during COVID. Yoga studios offering at-home virtual classes; local restaurants developing weekly family meal kits; and even drive-through home refinance signings have demonstrated that the tactics of how we do business needed to change in response to COVID; but frankly, maybe they needed to change a while ago.

Again, looking at you, contactless delivery and remote car buying.

The impact of COVID-19 is not a game of catch-up, but rather one of leapfrog. Winning companies are going to listen to their customer, be fearless when it comes to testing and learning, and look beyond today’s operating constraints to innovate on customer needs; maybe an iteration, maybe a pivot.

Three Five Two is an innovation and growth firm. They are in the business of designing products, services and processes that are designed for people. Read more about them here.