Helping Customers Navigate Competing Priorities Post-COVID
Supporting customers through financial challenges in a changed world
Key Takeaways
- Post-pandemic financial pressures require empathetic customer engagement
- Customers face complex trade-offs between competing financial obligations
- Flexible, personalized solutions drive better outcomes for customers and businesses
The COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally changed how customers manage their finances. As we move into a post-pandemic world, many customers continue to face difficult choices about which bills to pay first. Understanding these competing priorities is essential for companies that want to maintain strong customer relationships while protecting their revenue.
The New Financial Reality
The pandemic created unprecedented financial disruption for millions of customers. Job losses, reduced hours, increased healthcare costs, and economic uncertainty forced many people to make difficult decisions about their spending. Even as the economy recovers, many customers continue to feel the effects of this disruption.
When customers fall behind on payments, it's rarely because they don't want to pay. More often, they're managing multiple competing financial priorities: rent or mortgage, groceries, healthcare, utilities, and various service bills. Understanding this reality is the first step toward developing more effective engagement strategies.
Understanding Customer Decision-Making
Behavioral science research shows that financial stress affects how people make decisions. When facing multiple bills and limited resources, customers use mental accounting to prioritize their spending. Some bills feel more urgent because of immediate consequences, like losing housing or having utilities shut off. Others may be deferred because the consequences seem less immediate.
Customers are 3-4 times more likely to prioritize bills where they perceive an immediate impact on their daily life or basic needs.
This doesn't mean customers are making irresponsible choices. They're making rational decisions based on their circumstances and the information available to them. Companies that understand this can design engagement strategies that help customers see the value in maintaining all their accounts in good standing.
Moving Beyond Traditional Collections
Traditional collections approaches often assume that customers need to be reminded or pressured into paying. But when customers are managing competing priorities, these tactics can backfire. Aggressive or inflexible approaches may damage the customer relationship and push customers further toward financial distress.
More effective approaches recognize that customers want to pay but may need help finding a way to do so. This might include:
- Flexible payment arrangements that accommodate current circumstances
- Clear communication about options and consequences
- Empathetic engagement that treats customers with respect
- Self-service tools that give customers control over their accounts
The Role of Personalization
One-size-fits-all engagement strategies don't work when customers are facing diverse financial challenges. Some customers may need short-term relief while they get back on their feet. Others might benefit from longer-term payment plans. Still others may simply need a reminder at the right time through the right channel.
Advanced analytics and behavioral science can help companies understand which customers need what type of support. By analyzing payment patterns, engagement history, and other data, companies can predict which approaches are most likely to work for each customer and adjust their strategies accordingly.
Creating Win-Win Outcomes
When companies help customers successfully manage their competing priorities, everyone benefits. Customers maintain access to essential services, preserve their credit standing, and avoid the stress of aggressive collections. Companies improve recovery rates, reduce operational costs, and build stronger customer relationships that lead to improved lifetime value.
The key is to view delinquency management not as an adversarial process but as an opportunity to demonstrate that you understand and value your customers. In a post-pandemic world where customer loyalty is increasingly hard to maintain, this approach can be a significant competitive advantage.
The Path Forward
As we continue to navigate the post-pandemic economic landscape, companies need to evolve their approach to customer engagement. This means investing in technology and processes that enable personalized, empathetic outreach at scale. It means training teams to understand the psychology of financial stress. And it means measuring success not just in recovery rates but in customer satisfaction and retention.
At Symend, we're committed to helping companies make this transition. Our platform combines behavioral science, advanced analytics, and automation to help customers navigate their competing priorities while driving better business outcomes. Because we believe that in today's world, helping customers succeed is the key to your own success.
