Fast Change

A pinch and a punch and January’s over.  All those months of preparation; the marketing plan, the staffing rosters, the offers.  Then the excitement of the first weeks; the TV ads, the incentive launches, the sales meetings.  The inevitable hiccups; the week of snow, the unhelpful news stories about failing high streets and broken planes.  And finally, the dash for the line at the end of the month – beating targets, breaking records or falling short.  And as always, some small unanticipated changes, as customers evolve, their tastes move on and their buying habits shift. 

Sometimes these changes are slow.  All-inclusive used to be a niche board arrangement in a small number of hotels; now it has dedicated brochures and, in the case of First Choice, even a dedicated tour operator.

We’ve all grown used to dealing with these evolutionary changes but you only have to look at HMV and Jessops to see that even progressive long term changes in customer behaviour can seriously damage or even kill businesses that don’t respond.  It’s a sad fact that many well-known travel brands have suffered the same fate over recent years.  Others though, have not only survived, they’ve embraced the changes, seized new opportunities and created new business models in response to changing customer demands. 

Slow change is difficult and can catch even the best out at times, but fast change can knock you off your feet before you’ve even seen it coming.  At Kuoni, we’re seeing a huge increase in the number of customers choosing to contact us by e-mail… and they expect to be responded to immediately, just as they would if they walked into one of our stores.  This is not unique to us; most online brands are reporting significant growth in e-mail correspondence, to the point where several have become so bogged down that they’ve decided to switch off their e-mail option all together.  In their view it’s better to constrain the demand than to deal with it badly.

I was talking to my 17 year old son at the weekend and he was laughing that so many people ‘still use e-mail’!  He only has an e-mail account for one reason – he needs it to register for the other social platforms that he runs his life on. To him e-mail is already as redundant as written correspondence is to me.  In his world it’s all real time communication; text, BBM, Twitter, Facebook messenger, Instagram and the rest.  He and his friends simply cannot compute a world without immediate answers.

The fast change is just around the corner.  The way your customers engage with your business is about to head off in a completely different direction.  Into a world where they will expect the message sent to you from their breakfast table or from their bed to be acknowledged and dealt with immediately.

Next January feels a long way off just now - plenty of time then to prepare for the fast change coming your way.