It’s never easy to earn a customer’s trust. A retailer needs to perform complex combinations of tasks ranging from tangible actions like obtaining a SSL certificate and protecting payment information to intangible actions like improving website design or customer service to please shoppers and gain their trust.
The following trust and brand building tips helps businesses in creating best in-class customer experiences:
Stay Genuine
A brand ideally reflects the business strategy and the values of a company or a product. It must be genuine as when you brand a company or a product, you are most likely capturing its core identity. Only when you overcome the clutter and distill its real essence to your customers, you convey your brand identity.
Your ecommerce business is the true representation of who you are, what you sell, and how you want your customers to perceive you. Once a brand is build genuine online along with the people who make it up, customers connect with it easily the way they do with a casual friend.
Be Customer focused
Customers are the lifeblood of your business, and it’s no less than a great idea to drive your business towards customer centricity. Significant to note, if you care for your customers, they will care for your business. And when positive stories circulate about your company or your product, you can be rest assured that you are doing something right.
Practically, a customer focused store has huge impact not only to its customer service or marketing but also to every other thing you do. For e.g. allowing backorders and fulfilling them on time inspires customers for repeat purchases and builds in a trust which they convey in the form of stories to others. A strictly customer-focused business often makes decisions regarding inventory or technology keeping service in mind.
Communicate Valuable Information
People search for information mostly that they want or need. Brands being a promise to its customers need to communicate valuable information. If a brand offers meaningful information that is honest, unbiased and appropriately serves customer’s interests and needs, there is a high chance that customers will ask for more. And this very often leads to a conversation and eventually builds a trust.
Information is crucial online, especially when customers do not have the luxury to touch and feel products. Your product’s greater usability is significant to your business, but you need to add valuable content in the product description so as to make your brand trustworthy to your customers. That way, you are not merely selling stuff but effectively helping your customers have a better life.
Act Consistently
Consistency is often considered as the secret ingredient to achieve customer satisfaction. Businesses must have clear policies and supporting mechanisms to ensure that every interaction they have with a buyer is consistent.
Once customers know your brand, they begin to expect your business to act in a convinced way, and make purchases based on their experience with you. The customer journey comprises of many touch points, and your business need to ensure that all the teams interacting with the customers at different point of time know the overall message you intend to deliver. Your business cannot afford to have few teams offering a high level of service and the remaining offering none. Plus, if you consistently offer worthy products at reasonable prices and you ship on time and take care of customer problems, customers will prefer to order from you, even if they need to shed a few bucks more.
Pay Attention to your Customers
Many companies lean towards focusing too much on their product or service and barely listen to their customers. This inevitably results in decreasing revenue and profit. Trust is built with truly listening to people. Shoppers do not trust a business that do not pay attention to their concerns or answer their questions. Make it easy for your customers to get a hold of you, and answer their queries promptly.
People often think building a brand is mostly about promotions or telling folks about your business, but in reality it is more about letting you customers tell you about your business, and that’s when you create a reliable brand online.