I believe no one would buy from the business that he does not trust. It is important to build a good customer relationship, customer trust and customer loyalty to achieve a successful business.
While it does take quite an effort, the steps to get there are easy if you are willing to be open, honest, and efficient in communicating with your customers.
According to Freshdesk, 83% of the customers will trust a business that’s recommended by their friends and family. It means that your existing customers are key people who help your business grow.
In other words, your customers can help you generate more leads at Zero cost.
It is clear that building customer loyalty and trust is essential to any business goal. Today, we will explain 10 strategies that are useful and effective to build a long-lasting, trusting relationship with your customers.
Table of Contents
1. Offer Excellent Customer Service
The level of customer service that your business provides is the main factor that will impact customer loyalty and customer retention.
In other words, your support team, especially customer support and technical support will be the key person who delivers the high standards on speed and quality.
Once you’ve hired and trained your support agents, you need to make it easy for your agents to keep in touch.
Probably, you will need a channel like Exabytes Helpdesk Software that can offer you the help on managing your customer issues across all the channels such as Email, Live Chat, Facebook Chat, etc.
Next, ensure that your support agents reach out to the customer with questions and issues consistently. A set of guidelines for your agents is important to outline appropriate answers for more common enquiries and ensure they have the tools to find the solutions easily.
Train your agents to deliver the information that is specific to the customer instead of using general information and solutions. They might feel like they’re being treated like numbers.
That’s why your business goal also should offer an efficient, consistent service with a personal touch. When your team practise on a personal touch with every customer, it may help them provide better customer service and increase customer satisfaction.
A little effort for the customer would make a customer’s day. Remember customers don’t always look at the price of the products or services but also how the business delivers the services after-sales.
It should be a long-term business strategy to establish your customer loyalty towards your brand. That’s why this is a secret receipt for all big brands such as Nike, Apple to make their customers stay and love their products.
2. Publish Customer Reviews & Testimonials
The strongest and most effective marketing strategy is the Word of Mouth from the customer’s end. No matter how trustworthy your brand is, customers will always trust other customers’ feedback more than the company.
That’s because customers think that no matter how hard you try to be unbiased, you definitely promote and position your brand in a positive light.
Display and Respond To Customer Reviews – The Good and the Bad
Customers are smart and know something fishy is going on if the business only posts good reviews. The best way to gain customer trust is to openly publish all the reviews about your business no matter good or bad.
Respond to all the good and bad with the assistance of your customer about their dissatisfaction.
Customer support teams should reach out to the reviewers not only to show they care about what the customers think but also to accept their suggestions and critique.
It is the best way to improve customer satisfaction and take inspiration for the research team to provide the products and services that meet customer needs.
Display Customer Testimonials
You can always publish the testimonials on your site such as the interview video on how customers think about your business.
It encourages the customer to understand well about your product or service provided because we like to listen to other’s reviews about the product or service. Testimonials will actually increase your customer trust level on your brand.
In short, customer reviews and testimonials should be displayed on your website. Moreover, business listing platforms such as Google My Business would really help on your SEO rankings.
Find out more about how business listing benefits your business.
3. Be Transparent
To gain your customer trust in your brand, you need to be deserving of their trust. Be honest and transparent about what they can expect from your company. There should be no hiding anything from your customer.
Don’t overpromise your customers
Start from the first interaction with your brand. Try to avoid providing misleading sales copy and gimmicky marketing campaigns. Don’t attempt to grab your audience’s attention with exaggerated claims about your products or services.
A clear message about what you have to offer is the best practice to establish accurate customer expectations from the start.
Be straightforward to your customers
In order to achieve this goal, it is essential to get your sales team involved. They should be straightforward in letting the customers know about the pricing information, fees and any policies without hiding any surcharge or terms and conditions.
It would impact the prospective buyers in the future, like return and cancellation procedures.
Every customer has the right to know exactly what to expect before signing a contract or placing an order with you. Sometimes sharing certain pieces of information may result in losing your leads and to convert but that’s okay.
When it comes down to it, ensuring that all your customers are satisfied with their purchasing experience is more important than generating as many as possible customers. Building a long-term good relationship with your customer is more important than that.
In short, if a customer has all the information they need before making the decision, they will stay loyal to your brand. This is because they know well about your brand, your products or services.
Otherwise, it will be highly unlikely for them to stick around with the company that is not transparent or lies to their customers.
4. Offer Live Chat
Live Chat is the support system preferred by most customers. It eliminates the long waiting time that often comes with email ticketing or phone services.
They are more likely to get instant responses from support agents to solve their enquiries or issues as soon as possible.
If your business website has the live chat option such as Exabytes Live Chat on your website, customers are more likely to believe you are able to solve their problem quickly.
Sometimes, you also need a quick answer from us when you want to know how good our hosting plans are. Thus, your business may need a software which is really able to solve not only ticketing but also live chat support solutions.
Find out from us the most powerful helpdesk software and live chat system.
5. Engage with Customers via Social Media
Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. is the best way to connect with your customers, especially if you are running an E-commerce business with no face-to-face interaction.
For example, your customers would go to your Facebook Business Page to ask you certain simple questions. Assigning an agent to handle all the enquiries is essential for you to interact and communicate with your customers.
We all know how powerful it can be when customers spread the word or talk about our brands on social media. If you fail to handle the issues faced by your customers, you may lose more customers when they post negative reviews about your brands.
Of course, it would incur a high cost when you hire two persons to handle ticketing and also social media chat support.
That’s why you need Exabytes Helpdesk Software where you can manage all the enquiries across all channels such as Email, Phone, Live Chat, Facebook, etc. via a single platform.
6. Ask for Feedback
Always collect your customer feedback after the purchase. You need to know whether your product or service would actually meet the customer’s needs or not.
Preparing a feedback form on your website or automated email is essential when it comes to collecting your customer feedback regularly.
If you want to enhance or innovate your products or services, send them a survey on a regular basis and ask them to share their opinions.
It is a useful and effective way for marketing teams to understand their customer needs and help in research & development to develop or enhance the products.
After receiving all your customer responses, look for the opportunity to make improvements.
When you apply their feedback on your products, you not only show your customers that you value their input but it also increases customer loyalty, and this can have a positive impact on your entire customer base.
5 Questions to include in the Survey Form
- Did our products/services meet your expectations?
- Did our support team solve the problems you faced?
- Are you satisfied with the overall experience with us?
- Would you recommend us to your friends, family, etc.?
- Any suggestions/feedback you have for us?
7. Create a Loyalty Program – Reward Your Customers
In fact, 76% of North American customers say they’re more likely to choose retailers that offer loyalty programs. Moreover, 50% of existing customers are more likely to try new products than new customers.
Creating a loyalty program is an effective way to earn customer loyalty.
Customers are more likely to make the second purchase with you when they join your loyalty program, which can bring many exclusive deals such as coupons, discounts, membership day specials, etc.
Rewarding your customers will encourage repeat orders and give your customers a clear incentive to stick with your brand.
In other words, your customers will not switch to your competitors easily. This is a business strategy that can be adjusted for any industry and business model.
E-commerce retailers can often offer free bonus items to frequent shoppers, along with early access to certain sales and promotions.
B2B companies can offer perks like exclusive content and invitations to webinars and in-person events.
With Exabytes Sales Management Software, you can set up an automated email for your customers when they meet certain conditions that you have set. For example, it will send a promo code to your most loyal customer groups, etc.
8. Admit To Mistakes & Solve Them
If there is something going wrong (even sometimes when it was a customer’s error), the best solution for your customer service team is to admit the mistake.
3 Key Steps to Solve Customer Issues
- Address the customer issues clearly
- Apologize for the inconvenience
- Offer a solution to the problems
Customers will appreciate the honesty and trust when your team takes the issues seriously and place them as number 1 priority to solve and prevent the issues from happening again in the future.
When the next issue arises, your customers will place their trust on your team based on the previous positive experience they had with you.
9. Always Put Your Customers First
As a business owner, I believe you will always put your customers first. At the same time, you also need to provide powerful tools for your team to enhance their workflow.
It is a win-win situation where your employee satisfaction would actually reflect your customer satisfaction.
Get powerful helpdesk tools and train your employees to focus on customer needs and also customer service. Always encourage your team to work together and motivate them when they face problems.
When your team is convinced that their decisions and attitude make a big impact on your customers, they would be more likely to make the kind of decisions your customers want.
If your helpdesk system has a strong knowledge base to guide your team, it’s a great and efficient system to assist every customer.
Takeaways
Building customer trust and loyalty increases your customer base. As a business owner, you should practise it on your business to earn long-term success.
Earning customer trust doesn’t require any sort of complex strategy. You just need to start from offering excellent customer service and make sure your support team works on the goal together.
Always practise transparency and honesty with your customers in every stage of the buying process, and collect their feedback on a regular basis.
Start building customer loyalty today with us! Talk to us so that we can guide you along every step.
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