If you haven’t read Parts 1, 2, and 3 to increasing trust surrounding your company, do so now! It’s not imperative to understanding Part 4, but if you truly want to recognise what promotes customer trust and start crystallising your strategy, you need to appreciate and abide by all 5 key questions (where possible for your business).
Here’s a reminder:
1) Do you protect your customers economic interests? Part 1
2) Can customers easily post, and see other reviews, on your website? Part 2
3) Are employee incentives aligned to encourage customer trust? Part 3
4) Are you competent in delivering quality services? Part 4
5) And are you competent in providing good customer service? Part 5
The one way you can ensure your services are meeting the standards you promised your customers, is to collect, publish, and respond to your reviews. What are the people who are choosing to spend their hard-earned cash with you, actually saying about your goods?
If I haven't already drummed into you the benefits of reviews earlier in Part 2, I'm going to push a little harder! But honestly, how are you supposed to assure quality service without gaining feedback of some kind?
The manufacturers specifications are one thing, but research has found that user generated content is seen as - cue the trigger word! - more trustworthy than any other source.
Reviews allow you to follow up on poor service, in which you can respond to any grievances felt by your customers, demonstrating you are sincere and aware of any problems. There's nothing worse than ignoring or burying your head in the sand when it comes to customer complaints.
Even if you can't help any more than you've done with the current issue, you at least display to future patrons that you're actively trying to resolve problems to ensure quality service in the future, which then creates trust; Trust in you now that if they run into trouble you're easy to contact and are all ears, and the trust that you'll do better.
If you refer back to Part 2 of these blog instalments I talk about how a few negative reviews actually benefit you, they allow you to narrow in on problems you may not have been aware of and prepare ways to progress your products or services.
You can read a more in-depth post on the importance of responding to reviews and how they can help your business, by clicking the highlighted link.
Not only that, a good way to see if you're providing the quality you state is to check yourself against competitor pricing. At Reviews.co.uk we pride ourselves on our rolling monthly contracts and our fair price plans. If you can justify your costs, then so can you customers. A mutual relationship forms, and trust is established.
Here are some of our very own customer testimonials regarding our costs, and how we've created trust in our clients by always being transparent:
“If you are wanting a good system with a fair price then Reviews.co.uk will serve you very well.”
“Pricing is transparent, extremely reasonable, several times less than equivalent services from competitors."
“Other review platforms pricing is unfair and they try to lock you in to lengthy contracts through bullying.”
With thousands of happy clients, why not give us a try by signing up for a free trial, and make up your own mind?
In a nutshell, how are your customers supposed to believe and trust in your products or services, let alone use them, if they're shoddy and not meeting standards? Comparing quality against a similar competitor can help you raise that bar, as well as addressing issues publicly and privately with unhappy customers is a great way to build and strengthen that trust.
I hope this fourth instalment along with the previous three have been making you question your customer trust, and as such have left you inspired to either up your game, or give yourself a pat on the back for your current approach.
If you haven't already, read the rest of the questions and their qualifiers to pique your interest further. If nothing else, they should give you an inkling to get the building blocks for a trust strategy going, before our final post!
Get ready for the last question, in which we’ll go over customer service, which is different to this post covering quality of service. I look forward to then!
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