Starbuck's have seen a significant acceleration in the number of customers who downloaded the Starbucks App and joined Starbucks Rewards, up 17% from Q2.

“This highlights our success in acquiring new loyalty members as well as re-engaging our existing customer base,” Kevin Johnson, president/CEO of Starbucks.

Many businesses will have invested heavily in ensuring they provided a safe environment for their staff and customers. Those businesses will now most likely have gained the confidence of existing and new customers, who consciously or subconsciously identify their business as being safe, familiar and convenient.

In addition, many businesses will have begun their journey into e-commerce and nurtured a relationship with their customer that is now both physical & digital.

Maybe now is the time to turn that customer confidence and hybrid relationship into a loyalty program?

For years community platforms have been used to help people find local recommendations for goods and services, such as a good plumber or handyman or form local bonds based around common interests and hobbies.

Due to lockdown measures, local communities are becoming stronger and more important in daily life. In addition, according to McKinsey, lockdown has made consumers more mindful about how and where they spend their money. So how can your small business embed itself with your local community?

1. Find out where the conversation in your local community is happening.

2. Provide relevant information and deliver it in the right way, which will help build trust.

Does your community use a platform to share local requests and help one another out? Are its members seeking recommendations for great restaurants, electricians, accountants and the like, as well as questions on when a business is open and which is offering the best deal?

Consider these platforms as a search engine of a different kind. Rather than using Google, people are looking for local knowledge from their community that they can trust.

You may have just recently started selling your products or services online. As you get your head around this change to your business and as e-commerce surges ahead at a faster pace than ever before, get prepared for the next stage; social commerce.

Facebook's new Shops format means you will soon be able to directly measure sales driven from social media. China expects social commerce to make up 20% of all online purchases, with WeChat leading the way.

Not only that but this progression to social commerce could also pave the way for new digital currencies and bring blockchain/cryptocurrencies into the mainstream. See Facebook's R&D in Libra.