Innovation comes in different shapes and forms, but all too often we refer to "innovation" as the latest trends and technologies, expressed using fancy buzzwords, pitched with a flashy slide deck by companies typically founded in this century.
When life turns upside down, however—and customers and employees need help with finding swift solutions to problems they may have never faced or even considered—it’s clear that companies require innovation guided by more than a slide deck. Something simple. Something real. Not a distant vision, but a true need, existing here and now.
One heartening development among the relentless bad news of the COVID-19 pandemic has been watching companies all over the world innovate to "meet" their customers in whatever ways are necessary. Keeping the core value of customer service as a guiding star, firms in seemingly every sector have risen to the challenges posed by lockdowns, social distancing, shortages and economic uncertainty by going back to two basic questions: What support do our customers need—even if it’s not something we usually sell? And how do we get it to them as soon as possible?
In South Africa, for example, companies are working together to get hand sanitizer to hospitals:
In Russia, the technology company
Companies are also looking to their greatest asset—their employees—for ideas on how to be of service during this crisis. An artist who works for Lego was stranded in Wuhan, China while visiting family. She channeled her feelings of helplessness and frustration into creating a comic teaching kids about the virus and telling them not to be afraid. Lego picked up and amplified the comic and her message, which has now been shared millions of times on social media.
Companies aren’t just repurposing their assets to be of service, either; many are simply rethinking ways they conduct their core business. Grocery chains and gyms have expanded operating hours to lessen crowding where they can, and set aside shipping or workout times for the elderly or immune compromised.
All of these companies have stepped up—even in ways their customers might not have expected—to be of service in a time of crisis. They asked those questions, and innovated to act on the answers.
With the cooperation of local governments, in some countries we even have been able to accelerate the adoption of e-KYC (electronic Know Your Customer) methods. Doing so makes it easier for people to send and receive money from the convenience and safety of their homes, while still meeting the strict compliance measures we use to fight criminal activity including fraud and human trafficking.
Some of these were all-new ideas for us, and some were accelerations of ideas we were already working on. But they are all examples of innovation born of focus on the needs of our business and individual customers, even as those needs changed overnight. For all its tragedy, COVID-19 has served our and other companies as a high-speed incubator of ideas, technologies and ways of doing business—by bringing us back to those two basic questions. Companies who truly keep their customers at heart will make this lesson last.
