Trust is a central element in customer relationships. In fact, 81 per cent of customers won’t purchase from a brand they don’t trust. Customers trust that we will deliver what we promise, and they trust that our brand will be there for them when they need us most.
But how do you gain customer trust? It isn’t easy — even with the best customer service and quality products. This blog post offers some advice on customer experience strategies that can help improve your conversion rates and build customer loyalty.
What Is Customer Trust?
Trust is the foundation of customer relationships. Trust means that customers believe in you and your brand, and they feel confident buying from you.
The level of trust a customer has for a business will determine how loyal they are to their products or services, even when faced with competitive alternatives.
Why Is Customer Trust Important?
Customer trust is vital for customer relationships, customer service, and business success. If customers don’t believe in your brand or what you do, they won’t stick around much longer — especially when faced with competitive options. Without customer retention (and, more importantly, customer referrals), it will be challenging to achieve long-term growth and profit margins.
RELATED: Ethical Marketing, One Step At The Time
Trust and customer relationships are built on a foundation of customer service. When customers have problems with your products or services, you need to be there for them. Without this support, customer trust will decrease rapidly, which can cause negative reviews and even lawsuits in some cases. This effect has the potential of putting many businesses out of business over time.
What Damages Customer Trust?
Many factors can damage customer trust. Some of the most common include:
An Inability to Deliver
If you promise a quality product but deliver an inferior one, customers will be unhappy, and they’ll likely tell their friends about your brand — for all the wrong reasons. If this continues to happen, customer loyalty will decrease fast, which is never good news for any business.
Negative Reviews
You only have one chance at a first impression with new customers. If you fall short on customer service or delivery time, people will leave negative reviews online. This has been shown as being harmful to business growth as potential new customers may not purchase from you again because of those bad experiences shared by others in their network.
Lies, Deception and Fraud
Many customers don’t like being lied to. If they find out you’re trying to manipulate them or deceive them somehow, customer trust will be damaged beyond repair — very quickly. This includes customer reviews that are altered or fake.
Poor Communication
Poor customer communication is all too common these days. Customers are constantly frustrated with automated customer service experiences, poor response times, not being updated on order progress or status changes, and more.
RELATED: A Guide To Bulletproofing Your Marketing Strategy During A Crisis
How Can You Build Customer Trust?
Several customer experience strategies can help you build customer trust and, ultimately, customer loyalty. These include:
Customer Service Reviews and Testimonials
Customer reviews and customer testimonials are an essential part of your customer experience strategy. With the rise in online review sites, collecting positive customer feedback is more important than ever. This can help create social proof for potential customers who may be unsure about whether they want to buy. But these types of customer comments need to be genuine.
Maintaining Customer Trust With Clear Communication
Customers need to know that they can depend on you and your brand. So make sure that the lines of communication with them are always open — especially when there’s an issue with a product or service.
If customers feel like you’re ignoring them, it will be difficult for them to build trust with your brand. Customers expect businesses to have authentic communication about issues and changes made going forward.
RELATED: Authentic Communication In Times Of Crisis
Social Media Presence
In this customer-centric age, it’s essential to ensure that your business is active on the most popular social media platforms. Customers will expect you to be present and responsive here if they choose to contact you in these ways. If customers can’t find you online, there’s a good chance they’ll leave negative reviews. So don’t miss out on connecting with them where they’re already spending much of their time.
Transparency
Transparency is about being honest with customers. It’s not just about customer service, though. It also needs to be across your entire brand experience strategy. When customer trust is high, it’s often because the brand has built a reputation for transparency. This suggests that they’re honest, reliable, and easy to work with or buy from.
For customer service reps, this means resolving customer problems without any excuses. It also means giving them as much detail as possible when explaining what went wrong, no matter how embarrassing it might be for your company.
Deliver High-Quality Products and Services
Above all else, customer trust is built on delivering a high-quality product and service that consistently meets or exceeds customer expectations.
If customers are unhappy with what they receive from your business, it won’t be easy to convince them to buy again in the future. And it won’t matter how frequently you communicate with them about their issues.
Why You Need To Consult a Professional
There are customer experience experts who have years of customer service, marketing, and brand management experience. Working with someone like this can help you figure out how to better prioritise customer needs. They’ll make sure you’re focused on the right things when it comes to customer loyalty.
You’ll also be able to get a deeper understanding of your customer base using data-driven toolsets. This will allow insights into what works best across different channels, including social media, phone support interactions, email communications, etc. This way, you won’t just guess at ways to improve customer trust. Instead, you’ll know exactly where your biggest opportunities lie because real data have proved them.
And all these services take much less time than doing customer research on your own. So you’ll have time to put customer trust management strategies in place, which can ultimately lead to brand success.
Better Customer Trust = Brand Success
The customer is always right. So make sure you’re available to them whenever they need help and do everything in your power to resolve their problems quickly and effectively. If you’re ready to create a customer-centric brand strategy, the first step is reaching out to us at fmwaechter.com. We’re customer experience experts who have deep customer knowledge across various industries, so we can help you get started on the right path to improving customer trust fast. You can contact us to get started today!