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CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE The New Coronified Normal: What Was… What Is… And What Shall Be… By Carolyne Gathuru I am at the bank. I have gone in to get my photo taken in order to be processed as an online signatory for an existing account. Prior to this visit I had enquired why an in-person visit was necessary and if it was possible to conduct the activity offline. I was repeatedly told that the bank official had to physically take the photo and verify authenticity of identity, given the unscrupulous and underhand ways of many a Kenyan bank customer. We are dead smack in the middle of the Corona Virus pandemic. Our country has in the past week had the confirmed count go up from single to double digits. Many thoughts occur to me about this coerced bank visit and what it means for today’s customer, to be forced to be physically present in a public space in the throes of a physically spread fatal disease that has taken the world by storm. I wonder about the bank as I make this visit and if they have thought about how to rejig their processes to take into account what is emerging as the new normal for customer convenience. I have wondered as well if they are putting themselves in the customer’s apprehensive shoes, and configuring their systems and structures to take into account the mutation that customer convenience has taken on and what constitutes the new normal. At the bank entrance I look at the security lady and my new ‘Coronified’ mind wonders if the normal body scan with the hand held security scanning device would take into account the new social distancing parameters of keeping one and a half meters away. I mentally run through the scanning process and how close it brings the scanner and the scannee. I wonder exactly how this body scan would be conducted. I wonder if I will be knowingly and willfully subjecting myself to the potential risk of close range conversation with her during this exchange. I wonder too about her safety and the exposure she has to all sorts of customers that she would be scanning all The next question therefore to organiza- tions big and small alike would be - given what was, what is and what most likely will be, has thought been given to custom- er communication to enable appropriate guidance towards ensuring customer safe- ty compromised by the use of common facilities? 26 MAL35/20 ISSUE day at close contact, both from the scan and the conversation exchanges. Mercifully she waves me on without the search process. I feel a huge sense of relief. My apprehension subsides, but not too much. I then proceed as a result to wonder if the bank was exposing itself and by extension its customers to high risk, by waving in customers without that initial filtering process to determine if the entrant has in their possession firearms or any other weapons of individual or collective destruction. This is definitely Strike One! That within the period the country had embraced the new normal, this bank had not quickly adapted to security process change. Security is a bank’s first port of call for customer reassurance. The question therefore to organizations big and small alike would be - given what was, what is and what most likely will be, has thought been given to adjusting the safety procedures at the entry point for customers? I am now at the ticketing machine that banks have embraced over the past few years, to provide an organized system for customer queue management. I look at the queuing space at this machine. We are four customers. I wonder about the distance between the machine and the entrance door and if that distance will accommodate all four of us at a spaced distance of one and a half meters apart. In my swift calculation it will not. We as such are standing closer to each other as strangers during this Corona season than we have been advised by the government.