Blog

To deliver a best-in-class omnichannel retail experience, brands must focus on customer-centricity and deliver on new expectations from people on both sides of the counter.

The demand for transparency, authenticity and purpose has changed the landscape for brands— permanently.

The pandemic taught the world life-changing lessons we won’t soon forget. As I reflect on the past 20 months, I think of two memorable realizations of many I had as the crisis unfolded and evolved.

Find your purpose—and live it. For any organization today, everything has to surround a purpose.

Why the human interface of your brand needs to come first right now

The data race is on and the massive disruption in today’s marketplace is creating momentum for businesses to move exceedingly faster. At a recent Bond.Forums panel discussion hosted by Francis Silva, Bond’s VP, Analytics & Technology, leading experts tackled the biggest challenges and opportunities in data, and how organizations can unlock value—for both their brands and their customers—through data ecosystems.

The panel, “Building a Data Ecosystem to Enhance Customership,” featured leaders from Bond’s best-in-class technology partners: Bilal Khan, Managing Director & Head of Snowflake Canada; Khalil Alfar, GM Customer Success and Chief Data Officer, Microsoft; and Nicole Lusignan, Head of Strategy, North America, Qualtrics.

It came as a bit of a blow to many of us who thought “The Great COVID Job Churn” peaked in 2020: “The Great Resignation.”  The latter term, coined by American management professor Anthony Klotz in May 2021, refers to the notion that a wave of employees will be quitting their jobs, or have already, in a pandemic-related resignation boom. The magnitude of this trend really sank in during a virtual chat I had with my colleague, Mary Kalkanis, our VP of People and Values. Looking at the latest headlines and reports, we realized that if we thought churn had hit its highest level last year, we hadn’t even seen the half of it.   

In a year of massive disruption, businesses had to rapidly pivot how they went to market and how they engaged their customers. Yet, even as many brands accelerated their digital and loyalty transformations, which were well underway before the pandemic, there are gaps between customer expectations and experiences like never before.

As business leaders make plans for the return to the office, they’re adjusting to some of the permanent shifts the pandemic has left us: it’s out with closed cubicles and small personal desks and in open collaborative spaces and touchless coffee machines. However, it’s not just physical spaces that need a rethink, but the big intangible: organizational culture. Across sectors, CEOs and executives are grappling with tough questions: