We can thank the pandemic for reminding us: It’s all about the customer experience. Now that most of your customers’ experiences with you are happening online, you have some things you can control for. And that’s a good thing!

Wait - which customer?

Make sure your online tools line-up to meet your customers’ needs. And what if you have multiple customers connecting with you digitally: Donors, clients, ticket-buyers, visitors, parents, children? Outline what you know about how each customer-type uses your website or app or social-media platform – and make it crystal clear where each customer-type is meant to go. Show the customer you’re expecting her.

Is everybody ready?

Make sure your team is organized around meeting your customers’ needs. If you have folks in your organization who don’t understand digital, now is the time to teach teach teach. If you use outside help to keep your website, social media, and mobile apps humming, bring those folks in-house to educate everyone else.

Has the game changed?

This “digital-first” world, it turns out, is nicely convenient for lots of your customers. Your organization probably isn’t really going back to the Old Normal. Think about what this means for the future of meeting your customers’ needs. And remember: optimizing for efficiency isn’t the same as optimizing for growth. Use digital technology to help more people where you can. Identify and protect those elements of your customers’ experiences where the human connection is most beneficial to the customer. Then ask, how does this affect our business model? Does the New Normal make it easier or cheaper to deliver great experiences to customers?

Need help mapping your customers’ experiences? Not sure where technology can free your humans to do more or better work? Let’s talk about it!