Hands up if you two months ago foresaw what the world is going through right now.

Not that many hands.

Wherever you look you see the impact of unprecedented magnitude, both human as well as economical.

Something you normally only see in movies.

But today’s new normal offers a gift, namely reclaiming the ownership of our time. There are fewer meetings that we have to endure, no standing still in traffic, or mimic sardines in subways filled with strangers’ odours. We have been given a window of opportunity to begin new behaviours utilising the most precious asset we have: free time.

How are you using your time?

Our fight against the pandemic comes with some severe consequences. The economy put into a standstill and most businesses are suffering. People are losing jobs, budgets are cut, investments were frozen. Governments are trying to inject new money but are they going to be successful? Will the funds find those who need it the most? It can look dire and to some hopeless.

The new normal comes with a lot of uncertainty. Things will not be what they were, things will be different, in what way we don’t know, but we can act today to prepare for what will happen when it happens.

How you might ask?

By investing our free time, we’ve been given, in the right way we can focus on replacing as much uncertainty with certainty.

Regardless of how much we, try some things will remain uncertain and that’s OK. But many question marks can be straightened out by engaging our community by asking questions. Questions that will help us learn about how we feel, what we think, what we plan to do moving forward and why.

As a business the more you know, the better you can optimise your business towards the new normal.

Will people buy that car they were considering? Are we still open to travel as we were before the lockdown? How about restaurants, are they that cosy meeting point or a scary location? On average how many will have to choose lower price alternatives due to personal budget cuts?

The list of question is endless. Where to begin?

Don’t dive into your pools of existing big data. You won’t find much there. Your big data is reflecting past behaviours. Past is not the new normal and it won’t tell you the ‘why’ behind what people do and what they think today. Actions and emotions that will play a big part in defining what’s coming.

But this kind of information was, until now, mostly obtained by physical encounters, such as empathy studies, interviews and workshops… which obviously is a major no-no right now.

This the opportunity to set you up to harvest new business when things will get back to the new normal.

If we can overcome the physical limitations, the time has never been better to perform customer research. We have the time and these topics are top of mind amongst all of us. People will love you for asking them about how they feel and how you can serve them better.

Luckily with TheyDo, you have all the tools necessary to facilitate such research over distance. Virtual workshops, one on one interviews it doesn’t matter TheyDo has you covered as it lets you collect all the information gathered in such a way that everyone in your organisation is empowered to instantly know what truly matters and what to do about it.

Prepare better than your competitors, use your precious free time to replace uncertainty with certainty. This the opportunity to set you up to harvest new business when things will get back to the new normal.