Secret COVID-19 Engagement

 

For the last twenty years, companies have been gradually transforming themselves with digital technologies to adapt to new realities of the Internet and mobile. You’ll often hear brands discussing their "digital transformation" initiative. Digital transformation roadmaps could be anywhere from a year to ten years. Then COVID-19 hit.

Decade-long digital transformation roadmaps got compressed into days and weeks in order to respond to the realities of shelter in place. Businesses in every industry had to figure out how to reach their customers - whether those customers are shoppers, patients, students, businesses or even, employees - essentially overnight.

Businesses set up remote contact centers so their employees could work from home, health systems built telemedicine solutions in a matter of weeks, organizations delivered mass notifications and spun up hotlines to help deliver accurate information and retailers enabled curbside pickup to keep shoppers out of stores.

To better understand the effects of COVID-19 on businesses, Twilio, the leading cloud communications and customer engagement platform, surveyed over 2,500 enterprise decision makers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, and Singapore to gauge their views on digital engagement as a result of COVID-19. The survey found...

COVID-19 WAS THE DIGITAL ACCELERANT OF THE DECADE.

COVID-19 accelerated companies’ digital communications strategy by an average of 6 years while 97% of enterprise decision makers believe the pandemic sped up their company’s digital transformation.

Has the COVID-19 pandemic sped up digital transformation in your organization?

Yes, somewhat

Yes, a great deal

“Digital transformation is no joke. To the extent I pooh-poohed this buzzphrase before, it wasn’t because I didn’t believe in it, so much as that I distrust the odor of hype. The aroma has nearly vanished. Every business in the world is learning right now the importance of digital operations, from communicating to selling to business processes. In fact, another truism, that the pandemic is accelerating shifts that eventually would have happened anyway, has become obvious. The ramifications of digital transformation are massive and terrifying. Every worker, every leader, and every organization will be affected by it, and many will be left behind.”