Paraphrasing a line from one of my favourite movies: water is wet, the sky is blue, and what customers like today will be obsolete soon.

If you haven’t yet realised, the internet rolls out ads like sushi on a conveyor belt, which shortens customer attention spans year after year. As this virtual world builds more inroads into our lives, and customers zig-zag between devices and blink across several social media platforms, businesses are finding it harder to gain control and predict what customers want.

It doesn’t help that most large corporations take a long time to implement effective change.

There’s endless development of theories and frameworks that attempt to map out the customer journey and identify opportunities, but have these really been helpful? Think about it: if you go back to December 2019, could you have predicted that we’d all spend the next 12 months working from home in our pajamas?

Unfortunately, in today’s world, by the time changes are finalized and implemented, many consumers will have already moved on to the next trendy thing. Can you think of five trendy things in 2019 off the top of your head? Nope? Neither can we.

That’s why we need to accept that human behaviours are unpredictable, and customer preferences are constantly changing. This means that the message we’ve been all hearing on the loudspeaker is right: companies must be agile and adaptive. After all, trying to catch up with customers while being tangled up in corporate bureaucracy is like racing against a fighter jet with an elephant. You’re never going to win.

If you’re reading this, chances are that you’re already aware of these problems. But perhaps you feel that you’re not in a position to do a complete overhaul of the processes in your company.

There are still several things that executives of all levels can do to help bring their company up to speed. The good news is, sometimes, well actually, most of the time, good communications (internal and external) is all that it takes to oil up a rusty business.

Tip #1: Don’t just stand there, talk to your customers!

One often neglected source of market research is social media.

Hastily done surveys and awkward focus groups can only get you so far in helping to predict what your customers will like in the next few years. The irony is, people are the most honest (often brutally so) on social media, making online engagement a goldmine for authentic consumer feedback. Stray comments left by passing visitors actually offer the best insight into your consumer psyche because they are written when consumers are their most authentic selves.

Then comes the next problem. Most companies have content lined up for the usual suspects—Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and nowadays, TikTok. These posts are relevant, optimised, and consistently scheduled, but the comments section is utterly bare. What gives?

The thing is, merely setting up a social media account is like standing at the corner of a bar hoping that someone will walk up to you. Unless of course, you’re an A-list celebrity, you need to proactively participate in the online community. This means commenting on the posts of others, participating in discussions, and when they eventually come, replying to comments on your own posts.

However, the mere act of commenting alone won’t help. Run-of-the-mill, corporatised responses that say nothing are a surefire way to be forgettable, and being defensive in any capacity will earn you a one-way ticket to Meme land.

The goal of online engagement is to humanize a corporate entity so that interests are piqued and potential customers want to see what you have to offer. The ultimate goal, of course, is that they then purchase your product or service. When done right, and with the right amount of time invested, online engagement can transform cold, content-churning corporations into friendly entities that customers are eager to come back to again and again.

Tip #2: Don’t build walls, talk across departments!

Speaking of gradual changes—they are a lot more efficient than cumbersome overhauls that happen every few quarters.

Structural overhauls are often too little, too late—a last-minute scramble to fix problems that should have been addressed months ago. Not only do they deplete manpower and lower staff morale, customers may even fail to recognize your brand after all is said and done.

It can also be far too easy to miss the forest for the trees when you’re working in a sub-department of a large conglomerate. In these setups, brilliant ideas can often get shelved and forgotten because employees aren’t in the right position to enact change. Contrary to popular belief, the best ideas may not be found in meeting rooms, but rather on the other side of the cubicle (or computer screen if you’re talking about the post-COVID era).

While a company scales up, open communication between employees, no matter the rank or team they belong to, can remain intact. Anonymous feedback channels can help ideas that would otherwise remain bottled up in a corporate environment. The roadblock here is that such programmes and initiatives can only go so far as they are highly dependent on employee responsiveness.

Instead, weaving interdepartmental collaboration into daily operations can provide more opportunities for people to interact and bond. Over time, they will naturally come to understand situations across the departmental divide and be more receptive to ideas from other teams.

Tip #3: Take the time to listen, attentively

If you’re still not convinced about the power of listening, hear this out. In 2020, Audrey Tang, Digital Minister of Taiwan, used public digital forums to inform COVID-19 containment policies, which has led to the country being one of the most successful at keeping the pandemic under control. New measures could be implemented within 24 hours of a forum going live, and government officials could respond to social media queries with relevant information in record times of less than five minutes. Astoundingly, Taiwan’s digital democracy has seen 91% satisfaction rates amongst a usually disgruntled group of people.

And that’s really all there is to adapting to changes and staying agile. Listen, listen, listen—to your customers, to your workers, and to practically everyone around you. Because you never know where the clue to your next big business move might be hiding.

So, how does 8x8 stay agile and adaptive?

It’s evident in the way 8x8 works, where the lines of communication are always kept open. Internally, we often drop our colleagues a message asking for their opinion on a product prototype or a new pitch. Externally, we invite our customers and partners for private betas.

You can also see it in our products. 8x8’s APIs are built to be scalable and flexible. It doesn’t matter if you urgently need to pivot due to changing conditions, or if you need to temporarily scale back, or if you’re in the fortunate position to expand your operations beyond borders. 8x8’s embeddable communications tools are designed to help you stay agile and adaptive to your changing needs.

At 8x8, staying agile and adaptive is our guiding principle, and it's also what we want our customers to feel empowered to achieve. Get on the journey with us—reach out at hello-cpaas@8x8.com.