Do your customers trust you? I can certainly bet that there will be some customers who trust you highly, and others who don’t.
If the number of customers who don’t trust you is higher than those who do, then it should be a concern for you. You are losing it to the competition and it’s time that you must think about building (regaining) customer trust for your business.
When your prospects and customers trust you, they are more likely to buy from you. When you have the trust of your customers, you also boost the lifetime value of each customer and the subsequent income. But, building trust isn’t that easy. You have to remain consistent in your communication, understand your customers and deliver on your promises over time. Only then will you become the go-to provider in your niche.
Here are top 5 strategies that you can take to differentiate yourselves and make your customers trust you:
- Be accessible and hear what your customers are saying.
Be available to your customers and allow them to interact with you. Customers often have questions, and if there’s nowhere for them to go to have answers to their queries, or you don’t respond in a timely manner, you could begin to lose their trust.
Also, consider setting up a proper customer-support infrastructure, using support management software In this way, you can answer questions, which is a great way to increase your likability and accessibility and provide support to your customers. Also, it’s important to truly listen. When listening to your customers, take into account their feedback, and then follow through.
You can use the following methods to gather feedback from your customers:
- Surveys
- Customer Service Channels
- Social Media
- Communities and Groups
- Emails and Web Forms
- Have a reliable product or service.
The biggest challenge for your business is that when your product or service is delivered to the customers, they must be impressed with the quality of the product or service to justify their purchase. Talking great about your product and then selling a low-quality product is sure to draw negative reviews, leading to decreased trust and credibility for your brand.
One simple way to ensure your product’s quality is to put it through a rigorous testing process. You can also put together focus groups and ask your target audience what their needs are and what kind of product would solve their challenges.
For example, talking about the cloud and IT industry, there were many pain points that cloud service providers (CSPs) were facing in delivering their services to the end customers. To address them, we at RackNap, studied several providers and their exact needs, and then came up with a platform that was well received and successful.
This platform enables them to deliver all new-age cloud services – Microsoft (Office 365, Azure), AWS, OpenStack, and IBM-SoftLayer, along with the traditional web services and automates their business operations – all from a single panel.
- Be honest.
Being transparent means recognizing and being open about both your strengths and weaknesses. If your product isn’t right for one of your leads, you should be secure enough to guide that lead in the right direction.
Honesty shows you care about your customers and their needs, and your willingness to help them gets them the results they’re looking to achieve.
- Treat a customer like a valued partner.
Do you put your customers as priority number one? People know when they’re just a dollar sign to you, and while they may still buy from you if they believe your product solves their challenge, this does not build long-term trust or encourage renewals.
As previously mentioned, take your customer’s feedback seriously and act upon reasonable requests. What’s the point of listening if you’re not going to act on that feedback? Make sure it’s clear that you want your customer’s feedback and that your business truly values them as a partner.
- Maintain consistency.
Maintaining consistency ensures that your prospects and customers know what to expect. You can set both internal and external goals to maintain the quality of service.
Consistency can help your employees understand what their role is within your organization. The building blocks of a consistent brand include:
- Your message – Your brand message should be an extension of your actions and behavior. If it isn’t true to who you are, or you can’t deliver on it, you are being inconsistent. Stay focused on the image you’re developing.
- Your design – Creating consistent imagery across your logo, website, social networks and print materials is an easy win that can help you build trust with customers.
- Your service delivery – How will you communicate with your target audience, through which channels and how often? Knowing your prospects makes it easy to answer these questions and deliver the expected brand experience.
Conclusion
Trust is a byproduct of a commitment to quality and excellence.
If you can deliver the right results to the right people over the long haul, they will come to believe and trust in your product and service offerings.
Did you find these strategies helpful in gaining customer trust, or do you have any unique ways of gaining customer trust? If so, please share here by leaving a comment below.
