Twilio Study Finds COVID-19 Accelerated Companies’ Digital Communications Strategy by Six Years

Twilio, the leading cloud communications platform, announced the results of a global survey measuring the impact and outlook of the COVID-19 pandemic on businesses’ digital engagement strategies. 

To better understand the magnitude of COVID-19 and the lasting effect it will have on business and customer engagement, Twilio surveyed over 2,500 enterprise decision makers globally to gauge the effect on their company’s digital transformation and communication roadmap. The COVID-19 Digital Engagement Report is a snapshot of how businesses have addressed the complex challenges posed by this crisis and how they will continue to evolve moving forward.

“Over the last few months, we’ve seen years-long digital transformation roadmaps compressed into days and weeks in order to adapt to the new normal as a result of COVID-19. Our customers in nearly every industry have had to identify new ways to communicate with their customers and stakeholders – from patients, to students, to shoppers, and even employees – essentially overnight,” said Glenn Weinstein, Chief Customer Officer at Twilio. “Cloud scale, speed, and agility are enabling organizations to innovate faster than ever. We believe the solutions being built today will be the standard for digital engagement in the future.” 

Key findings of the COVID-19 Digital Engagement Report include:

• COVID-19 was the digital accelerant of the decade. COVID-19 accelerated companies’ digital communications strategy by an average of 6 years. 97% of enterprise decision makers believe the pandemic sped up their company’s digital transformation. 
• Digital communication is the new lifeblood for business. Almost all companies (95%) are seeking new ways of engaging customers as a result of COVID-19. 92% say transforming digital communications is extremely or very critical to address current business challenges.
• Previous inhibitors to innovation have been broken down. 79% of respondents say that COVID-19 increased the budget for digital transformation. Companies report easing of barriers such as: lack of clear strategy (37%), getting executive approval (37%), reluctance to replace legacy software (35%), and lack of time (34%). 
• Omnichannel communication is taking on new importance. 92% say their organization is very or somewhat likely to expand digital communication channels as the world reopens. Over half (54%) said COVID-19 propelled focus on omnichannel communications and 53% added new channels amid the pandemic. 1 in 3 companies started using live chat and IVR channels for the first time as a result of COVID-19. 

See the report now and visit Twilio.com/covid for deeper insight into how businesses can build for the new normal.

Methodology

Twilio conducted a five-minute online survey of 2,569 enterprise decision-makers in June 2020. There were 225 to 300 survey respondents each from Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The respondents were Directors and above in Corporate Communications, Customer Experience, Customer or Technical Support, Data Analytics or Business Intelligence, Executive Leadership or Administration, IT or Engineering, Innovation, Marketing, Operations, Product Design/Development, Sales or Business Development, or Strategic Planning at companies with 500+ employees. The survey was designed and analyzed by Lawless Research; respondents did not know that Twilio was the sponsor.