Oct 6, 2021 | Updated Oct 6, 2021
By @JoshuaNgala
Do not trust your manager. Don’t get too emotional about anything at the company. Remember, it’s not personal; it’s only business…
You must have heard such outdated thoughts. Leftovers from the early years of the industrial age, when business organizations felt they had to protect themselves through command-and-control methods.
In the present day, however, businesses are undergoing trust transformations where culture matters, employees matter, customers matter, and it all starts at the top.
American motivational speaker Zig Ziglar once said: “If people like you they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you they’ll do business with you. Before customers make a purchase from you, they need to be able to trust you.
The question isn’t: Should they trust you? It’s: How do you build trust so your relationship, and hopefully company, can grow and thrive? Before you can build trust, you have to understand what it means to you, your employees, partners, and consumers.
Trust is the social glue that holds business relationships together by keeping a visionary company the ‘crown jewel’ in their industries.
According to the book “Relationship Marketing and Customer Relationship Management,” by Annekie Brink and Adele Berndt, trust is the confidence both parties in the relationship have that the other party won’t do something harmful or risky.
The dynamics of building a relationship is necessarily incremental. You can only truly gain someone’s trust and commitment little by little over time.
It is the expectation and faith that two parties-for this case your company and its consumers will act to secure mutual benefits.
But how do you build trust so your relationship, and hopefully company, can grow and thrive? Essentially, knowing how to build trust with customers is critical in today’s business climate.
Extremely important is trust, and quite personal between you and your customers. It also takes a long time to build, and can be easily damaged.
A manager or an executive may take years to develop the trust of his or her employees and that of consumers, but only moments to lose it. For that reason, businesses develop trust by standing behind their promises. Lack of it becomes the biggest expense.
Business magnate Warren Buffett once said that it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.
Consider how Facebook’s untouchable aura evaporated overnight following reports of their association with the British political consultants, Cambridge Analytica?
In essence, no corporation is immune to scandal and the resulting impact on customers’ trust.
Relationships are solidified by a trust. Institutions are built on it. You gain trust by asking not what people can do for you, but what you can do for others.
In other words, a solid relationship is essentially important in customer value proposition (CVP) – the sum total of benefits that a seller promises a customer will receive in return for the payment or other value transfer.
The trust process requires the willingness to increase the resources invested in another party. It’s based on positive expectations resulting from past positive mutual interactions.
Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Learn about the incredible power of relationships.
Consequently, it’s easy to look at any company, especially one doing well, and be able to describe who their customers are.
Repeated profitable sales are the lifeblood of such businesses. Without them, your business will die. A great example of this is the Hall of Famer, the late Katharine Graham who cultivated trust in everyone.
The tragic death of her husband transformed her from wife to publisher overnight. She took over the Washington Post in 1963 after the death of her husband, Philip Graham.
Her shy and quiet demeanor seemed unfit to deal with the demands of one of the most important newspapers in America.
Graham proved everyone wrong. She helped to build one of the great newspapers and most successful businesses. Her most lasting legacy was running the Post with compassion, kindness, and sincerity.
She became a powerful figure. The bottom line is: she made friends with everyone—not just those who could assist her newspaper or augment her position.
Presently, a company creates and delivers unique value for its customers and differentiates itself from its competitors through a combination of engaged employees and accountable management.
Such are outcomes of developed trust.
A brand, therefore, is what a business is all about in the hearts and minds of the people. Most importantly, to its future. That is based on consumer trust and loyalty.
The fate of your business lies not just in having the best product or service but in a company’s ability to market products or services by establishing proper relationships to interact with the customers through their ‘journey’.
That is why, if you have the ability to grow your revenue profitably, there’s almost no business problem you can’t solve. But it depends on how to position your business, dominate your market, and stay first in the minds of consumers.
As a matter of fact, it is widely evident that without a brand ideal, no business can truly excel. It’s on the reason that sales revenue is the best way to judge your marketing’s success.
Have you ever thought about why consumers buy from you rather than another company? It’s because of your (company’s) brand image, reputation, and the relationships you have with them.
Such, well maintained, doesn’t leak money but elevates companies with ideals of improving people’s lives. At the center of all, to outperform the market by a huge margin.
To transform a company, people must align themselves and work together toward one goal. But it will not happen without a culture of trust.
Below are the 6 ways a company can build trust with its consumers:
1. Improve your security:
Modern consumers are increasingly savvy, selective, and cynical about their purchasing decisions.
Design strategies to increase confidence in your e-commerce. With that, your customers will feel perfectly safe using their credit cards on the Internet to shop with you.
For a physical store, include it on Google map with its location. Consumers feel more secure in knowing you’re not only on the Internet.
Beef up your security with basic SSL protection; make sure the transaction is made with HTTPS. Otherwise, not only are you endangering your customer data but you are also breaking the law.
Importantly, offer several payment methods.
Although trust to pay with credit cards on the Internet has increased, there are still users who prefer to use PayPal or pay on delivery.
Include all the options that allow you to capture more customers.
Even if you aren’t selling your products through an e-commerce platform, customers will still be visiting your website, and the amount of safety they feel while there can play a significant role in how much they trust your brand.
Use stamps of confidence. Such certificates make consumers trust your business at the time to give their data: for 37% of buyers, this is the most important factor.
2. Keep your Promises:
Strategically, it’s in your best interest to under-promise and over-deliver when it comes to all forms of customer expectations.
Don’t just assume trust exists. It makes sense that as social human beings, we want to keep promises we make to our partners.
But often the little things get overlooked.
Make keeping your promises about little things as important as keeping your promises about the big things.
Product advertisement creates consumer expectations. People deliver experience which creates repeat purchase.
Delivering promises is directly linked to customer acquisition cost helps in measuring your ability to generate new revenue from sales and marketing expenditures.
A business should maintain consumer satisfaction at a higher level. Satisfaction is the difference between expectation and experience.
Buzz words and unfulfilled brand promises have made consumers not trust brands nearly as much as they used to.
The reason being, customers feel they’ve been lied to, and taken for granted over time.
That is a broken trust already. Keep a promise and earn it!
A fulfilled promise boosts brand positioning – the strategic intent (aim) or design for a differentiated brand image within a specific target audience.
3. Publish Customer Reviews and Testimonials:
No matter how trustworthy your brand is, consumers will almost always trust other consumers more than companies. Stories drive people to action. Good stories carry ideas. A good story tells good customer service.
Why does word of mouth matter? Consumers know that no matter how unbiased you may try to be; you’re ultimately going to position your brand in a positive light.
Word of mouth generates more than twice the sales of advertising. It creates trust.
Leverage your audience’s trust of other customers to your advantage by publishing reviews and testimonials on your site.
So, how do you design customer reviews and testimonials? If you run an e-commerce store, for example, encourage your customers to leave reviews and add those reviews to product pages.
If you run a service-based business, on the other hand, ask your current and past clients if they’d be willing to share their experiences with your company.
Then, design a testimonials page based filled with their responses.
Regardless of the exact approach you take, word of mouth from other consumers will make prospective buyers more comfortable giving your business a chance — and will help them trust your brand right from the start.
Even though only 7% of word of mouth is online. Word of mouth creates trusts, converting the customers into advocates.
4. Communicate Openly and Frequently:
Could transparency really be the catalyst to drive trust? Be open and transparent about your goals and processes.
Don’t ever leave your customers in the dark. As a golden rule: the more you talk to your customers, the better.
Make it a rule that most communication, especially important subject matter, must happen. If something ever goes wrong, acknowledge the error proactively.
The true meaning of a message can get lost via text, email, and sometimes even on the phone. Make sure you are both heard and understood the same thing by talking face to face.
Transparency enhances brand equity – the commercial value a brand provides to a firm through its effects on the attitudes and behaviors of its stakeholders.
5. Go all-out for customer service:
The customer service your company provides can have a major bearing on customer trust and loyalty.
Trust becomes fragile when customers have an issue with something. If they experience a problem and receive prompt, helpful and memorable service experience, you will stick in their minds and hearts.
In essence, they’ll remember you as a reliable brand.
But if you drop the ball, you’ll lose a customer forever and likely experience a dip in your reputation. Whenever you can, go all-out in your customer service.
Don’t just turn to the most cost-efficient way to resolve a problem; make sure your customers feel heard and appreciated, and go out of your way to make them happy.
It’s, therefore, crucial to hire dedicated support staff who are trained to a high standard.
The aim here is to provide an efficient, professional, and personable experience for your customers.
6. Always be available:
Be contactable in any possible way. Customers feel comforted knowing they can talk with someone at any time they choose.
A brand ideal is a business’s essential reason for being, the higher-order benefit it brings to the world.
Without a brand ideal, no business can truly excel. A brand defines who you are and what you stand for as a business to everyone the business touches, from employees to end consumers.
Along those same lines, it’s vital that your brand always be available, in some way, for the consumers who need it.
A business’ contact page is the touchpoint of interaction with their customers. For that very reason, it’s guaranteed to be one of the most visited pages on any website.
On landing pages, including a phone number or an instant chat box can instantly increase your conversion rate.
It’s a great idea to provide as many avenues for connection as possible: phone numbers, your email address, social media handles and live chat functionality.
