Earn trust, earn trust, earn trust. Then you can worry about the rest. – Seth Godin.
According to Edelman, over 80% of consumers stated they had to trust a business before purchasing anything from them.
Trust makes a consumer feel safe and secure, knowing that they will get value from a business for the money they provide.
Building trust with consumers also inspires them to remain loyal to a brand, and in turn, encourage repeat business and referrals to friends and family. All of which enables a company to grow.
However, as the owner of your business, your company’s trustworthiness may be difficult to understand. To determine whether other people trust your brand, ask for opinions from staff, existing customers, and potential new customers.
As Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO from Uber, explains;
The higher up in the chain of command you are, the harder it is to know what’s going on, so you have to discover the right information out of your people. You have to be great at reading body language and asking questions. You have to engender trust to get to the real stuff. Leaders who are disconnected from reality are the ones who fail.
From finding out how your company is perceived, you can figure out what needs improving to make your business dependable and somewhere people feel safe to buy.
Below are a few helpful tips and solutions for earning and maintaining trust to build a better reputation.
Perfect Your Customer Service
Customer service bridges the gap between your consumer and your product.
If your customer service operates well and facilitates the needs of your customers, it can reduce customer concerns and build lasting relationships and loyalty. While also demonstrating an excellent image of what your business stands for and how it operates.
On the other hand, if customer service agents are sparse, communication isn’t personable or helpful, or there’s a long wait time to reach an operator. Your customer service solution will tarnish any trust between your business and customer.
To enhance your companies customer service offering, consider the following;
- Add a WordPress live chat plugin to your company website. In doing so, customers can contact you in real-time to quickly discuss and resolve questions and queries.
- Update business’s contact information regularly on all relevant platforms (social media, directories, etc.)
- If you notice an increase in specific inquiries, design a help page with FAQ’s to answer common questions.
- Hire extra staff to handle an increase in calls and email inquiries.
- Train customer service agents regularly to ensure they maintain a professional, polite, helpful manner at all times.
By reducing customers’ wait time, handling queries quickly, and ensuring customers are satisfied with the service provided, a company can significantly enhance their integrity.
Enhance Online Reputation
The Spiegel research center reveals 95% of customers’ source reviews before buying a product. And so, managing your online reputation is key to build trust with consumers.
The internet has given consumers numerous ways to sing a business’s praises, which can bolster a company’s reputation among viewers.
Millennials, and Generation Z in particular, are less trusting of marketing efforts and advertisements created by businesses. And they instead prefer authentic, genuine content from consumers, depicting real reviews.
Here are a few ways your business can manage and enhance its online reputation in light of the above.
Manage Critical Reviews
To manage and create a trustworthy rep, consider sending an authentic reply to any bad reviews you find about your business online.
Refrain from sending a message that appears to be copied and edited to any consumer who submits a bad review. Otherwise, onlookers reading through the reviews to decide on your business credibility will pick up on this.
Responding to bad reviews shows your business takes responsibility and cares about making things right with the consumer.
The response should be diplomatic and helpful while seeking to create a resolution.
Ask Customers To Write Reviews
You may want to prompt customers following purchasing your product or service to write a review about your company.
Some businesses send an email to a consumer following their purchase. With a link to a review site of the companies choosing, to enable customers a quick and convenient way to explain their experience. with a business
If you have an outstanding business, the reviews will reveal it. Moreover, other potential customers viewing those reviews will take the consumers’ comments on board when deciding whether to buy from your company.
Incentivize Social Posts
Incentivize customers to post and tag your company in the content on social media.
You can also send social media influencers your products to trial and pictures of themselves, demonstrate using the product, and give their own opinion.
Curate A Social Wall
Create a social wall on your website or as a digital billboard. A social wall allows you to curate the best content from multiple social media platforms relating to your business and display these in one place for customers to see.
Be Transparent and Honest
The missions and values of your company should be clear and highlight the intentions of your business.
Any misalignment with your company’s vows can lead to consumers becoming confused or disappointed with the product or service your company offers.
For example, Apple desires to provide the best computing technology to people across 140 countries. Apple’s continuous innovative technological advancements and modern design have enabled Apple to achieve this mission continuously.
However, if Apple didn’t evolve its technology and failed to supply computers to the 140 countries, it claims. They wouldn’t follow through on their promise, which would have a disastrous impact on the business’s image among the public.
When running a company, it’s essential to stay true to your company’s objectives and intentions with honesty. For example, if your company promises to create clothing with recycled textiles, it’s essential to maintain this promise. Otherwise, the business will lose all credibility among its fans and followers if you don’t.
Transparency and honesty are also just as important when a company makes a mistake. Owning up to any downfalls they may have experienced, opposed to hiding the truth, is much more respectable.
Do the right thing. Always. – Ted Coine
Precautionary Measures
In light of the statement made above about businesses owning up to their mistakes. Ideally, it’s within the company and the consumer’s interest if no errors are made at all. Especially when it involves the customer’s credentials.
Data security has become an increasingly hot topic over the years as the internet has empowered a technological wave of criminals who seek access to attack businesses for their own gain.
As such, taking ample precautionary measures is necessary to prevent any harm to your business, but more so, your customer’s data.
Incorporating multiple backup drives or servers to store data is recommended. Plus hiring an IT management company to prevent online intruders from attacking.
Customers are increasingly becoming aware of the risks of sharing their data. Beyond worries over whether a company will attempt to use it for their advantage or share it with third parties. There’s also the worry that data won’t be taken care of properly by companies.
Instill trust in your customers by keeping your reputation clear of data breaches. In doing so, you can maintain your company’s livelihood and protect the trust formed between your business and its customers.
Updated User-friendly Website
A website for all businesses is non-negotiable. Without one, it’ll be tough for customers to build confidence in using your brand.
Websites are an expected online platform, which consumers will often search for if they’re interested in finding out more about your company.
But it’s not enough to just have a website either. It also needs to tick a few boxes before a customer deems a company trustworthy. For instance;
Website Design
The design matters to consumers. Data reveals 75% of customers judge a company based on the design of their site. And so it’s essential to create a website that’s consistent with your company brand yet attractive, striking, and memorable.
For example, a busy website cluttered with various fonts, mix-matched images, and an undefined logo will look amateur and untrustworthy.
User-Friendly
With more consumers using their mobile to do online searches for businesses like yours. It makes sense why Google introduced mobilegeddon in 2014. It encourages website owners to adapt their site to make it accessible and easier to use on multiple devices, including tablets and mobile.
Non-mobile friendly sites are tricky to use as consumers need to either squint to read the page. Or zoom in and out of the screen to read the text and see imagery.
Overall, a rocky experience online for consumers causes customers to worry about a business’s legitimacy, particularly when they fail to keep up with their competitors who have optimized sites.
The above is a nonexhaustive insight into how your company can establish stronger ties with consumers and encourage repeat custom.
Trust is an essential element of a successful and lucrative company, enabling an enterprise to expand and prosper. Without it, a company will cease to exist. As depicted above, trust can be chipped away if the above points are not taken care of.
