Customer loyalty is waning. There are many options for customers to find products or services similar to yours with the click of a button. However, the trend has led to customer loyalty decreasing in recent years.
Trust is more important than ever before.
Your potential customers are savvier and willing to dig deeper into your Business before making a purchasing decision. If you focus on building trust, you’ll have a higher chance of customer referrals as a result. Studies show 83% of customers will recommend a company that they trust.
Word of mouth remains a powerful marketing tool, and it’s free.
But how do you gain customer trust? These rules will help your business win over consumers.
1. Ask for Testimonials and Reviews
You need to ask for testimonials and reviews. This is a must in every business. My dentist surprised me when he sent an immediate request, via email, to leave a review online after a recent appointment.
And I left a review that I wouldn’t have left otherwise.
Why?
I had a great experience, the dentist provided an easy link to leave reviews, and the email reminded me to leave feedback.
But there are plenty of other businesses that deserve a review that I have forgotten about. The key is to make it as easy as possible to leave testimonials and reviews. A few tips I recommend are:
- Use email marketing to request a review or testimonial after a service is rendered.
- Ask customers and clients for a review when handing them a receipt.
You must ask for an unbiased review so that you’re not encouraging the person to provide a false opinion of your company.
Reviews and testimonials build trust for businesses.
2. Leave Negative Feedback in Place and Respond
Some businesses dare to ask customers and clients to remove Negative Feedback about their company. Unfortunately, there have been businesses that threaten to sue over negative feedback. If you’re one of these companies, you need to change your tactics.
Negative feedback is a part of doing business.
Not every customer or client will be thrilled with your service. Some customers and clients have expectations that you may never meet.
The Internet makes it easy to leave negative feedback, so you’ll likely have to deal with it at some point. What can you do?
- Respond and offer to make it up to the customer.
- Learn from the mistakes you made.
- Ask to talk to the customer further to discuss what you can do better.
Customers are savvy, and they realize that every business has a negative review at some point.
3. Build Trust Through Results
Trust can be built through results. For example, even if a plumber is late to a job, if they perform the task better than anyone in the business, many people will forget that the plumber was ten minutes late.
Results are what ultimately matter to the customer.
And if you have a way to demonstrate your results, you’ll have an easier time gaining trust. For example, lawyers are notorious for providing results on their websites because people worry about one thing: settlement amounts.
A quick look at Reyna Injury Lawyers’ site provides a prime example of building trust through results. The firm has settlements listed on its site for people to view quickly.
- $5.9 million wrongful death
- $2 million breach of contract
- $1.1 million personal injury
And these are the “wow factors.” There are also other settlements listed that are, I’m assuming, more common, such as $117,000 for personal injury claims or $100,000 for an auto accident settlement.
The one thing that you’ll recognize is that the company isn’t afraid to list their higher and lower settlements.
Why?
It’s realistic. Not every lawsuit is worth millions, so the company has many figures. It’s all about trust, and listing the lower settlements is smart on the company’s part.
This can be done for every business, but it works incredibly well in the service business. Landscapers, for example, can list an entire portfolio of their results with before and after photos.
Builders can show their finished buildings as their results.
Results matter most to the customer, so find a way to showcase your results online.
The post 3 Rules to Gain Customer Trust as Customer Loyalty Continues to Decline appeared first on StreetWise Journal.
