As noted in a BBC article:

“The pandemic has ushered in a new era for tech, from Zooms and pings to e-scooters and online shopping. Back in April 2020, Microsoft's Brad Smith said two years of digital transformation had taken place in just two months.”

Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS insight, thinks the so-called ‘Zoom boom’ - the era of video calls - is here to stay:

"For many people, the shift to video communications is now permanent," he says.

"What would have been a phone call is now likely to be a video call and I expect to see this form of communication being used far more widely when people are out and about, not just stuck at home or in a fixed location."

Wood thinks a combination of physical and digital meetings will become the new normal. This seems to tally with the continued popularity of working from home initiatives.

If Sartre was correct and ‘hell is other people’, the numbers who desire a return to the office seems to reflect it. A report by Accenture in 2020 about COVID-19 habits found:

“The once mandatory working from home has been embraced by many and continues to be popular - 86% of consumers plan to continue or increase working at home - despite many offices reopening.”

Of course, home working is just one part of the picture. For those who don’t, or can’t, work from home, the pandemic still ushered in a range of widely adopted digital trends. In particular, these new trends were felt in e-commerce and entertainment. Did you try to sign up to Ocado at the beginning of the pandemic to replenish your toilet paper stocks? You weren’t alone. 

Again, via Accenture:

“The dramatic rise in the adoption of e-commerce and omnichannel services, which has been evident since the start of our research, sees no sign of abating. The latest data suggests there will be a huge increase of 169% in e-commerce purchases from new or low frequency users, post-outbreak. And the vast majority of consumers who have increased their use of digital and omnichannel services, such as home delivery, curb-side pickup or shopping via social media platforms expect to sustain these activities into the future.”

We may have long passed the Hunger Games stage of the pandemic, but the convenience and choice offered by home shopping won many people over. A report by Swiss RE from December 2020 noted:

“Companies have invested in logistics and supply chains and widened their product ranges. This has attracted large numbers of consumers, and a survey earlier this year found many of them were likely to continue to buy online for non-health reasons such as convenience, time savings and wider product ranges.”

Such drastic change seems to have been the catalyst needed to change habits for good. Perhaps there was an element of peer approval at play too? You didn’t feel embarrassed about the neighbours seeing you ordering groceries online, because everyone else was as well? 

A report by Deloitte that looked at the retail habits generated by the pandemic observed:

“Lockdown obliged consumers to change their shopping behaviour: 38 per cent of respondents did more shopping online relative to pre-lockdown levels. Half of these converts to online shopping would maintain these behaviours post-lockdown.

“During lockdown some customers experienced online food shopping for the first time. The unfamiliar first step was taken and for some there will be no going back. Online grocery retailers such as Ocado believe that things will never revert to how they were before the pandemic and are investing in scaling their e-commerce capacity.”