Build Customer Trust
 By R.K. Sparkman

Would you hand your credit card to a fellow selling jewelry out a car trunk in an alley? Would you believe an ad if you had never heard a good word about the product?

What’s the common theme here? Trust. Or rather, the lack of it.

When customers lose faith in you or conclude your product isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, or if they decide you aren’t who you claim to be, cash registers fall silent. There’s not much you can do to overcome lack of trust.

But you can prevent such disasters. You even can do much to build customer trust in your business, your services and your product offerings. Some ideas:

Build Relationships
Get to know customers and let them know you. If customers want to talk, talk as long as they want. Encourage feedback, written and verbal.

Provide means for them to contact you outside the regular sales loop. Survey customers. Ask their opinions and preferences.

Reveal your plans to clients to determine whether your ideas mesh with their desires. Respond to feedback. Persuade customers that their comments matter.

Remind customers that what they want, how they feel and whether they are happy all matter to you.

Personalize Relationships
Trust comes with familiarity. Service providers are particularly well-suited to personalizing customer relationships, but product sellers and manufacturers can too.

Put a name and a face on all printed communications, even invoices if it’s practical.

Business cards are so inexpensive that there’s no good reason not to include photos with contact information.

If customers visit your store, put name tags on the staff. Add a wall of photos with employees’ names, pictures and even personal notations, such as company achievements or personal hobbies and interests.

Use Testimonials
There’s no better salesman than a satisfied customer. Happy buyers are proof that what you sell is worth the money. They have the independent credibility of a third-party with no ax to grind.

The more testimonials the better. Lists of benefits and features can leave buyers short of that last step in the purchase decision: confidence. Build confidence by showing buyers people just like themselves who speak at length about how you fulfilled your promise. Whenever possible, personalize testimonials with photos, names and city of residence to add credibility.

Don’t Over-Promise Or Under-Deliver
The fastest way to lose customers’ trust is to disappoint them.

Resist the urge to promise what you can’t guarantee. Always strive to deliver everything, if not more than, you’ve promised.

On those unfortunate occasions when you fall short, act quickly to compensate customers for their disappointment. Either make good on the original promise, or make an appropriate adjustment or credit for future purchases.

In conjunction with your promises, track customer satisfaction. If the satisfaction level is nothing to shout about, fix the problem. If customers are delighted, get their permission to use them in testimonials.

Don’t Mislead
This is like over-promising and under-delivering, except worse.

Customers may cut you slack if once in a great while you fall short of expectations. But you’re likely to poison the relationship forever if they suspect you intentionally lead them astray. Honesty is the best policy. You can’t repair a dishonest reputation.

Give Guarantees
Guarantees can be deal closers for fence-sitters. Knowing they have recourse if their purchase turns out to be a lemon gives customers confidence that can make the difference between buying and not buying.

The better the guarantee, of course, the more persuasive. A 100-percent, money-back guarantee eliminates all risk. And unless you’re selling defective goods and services, or you’re over-promising, there’s not much chance you’ll have to return a buyer’s purchase price.

Publicize Your Trustworthiness
Finally, not all customers will have the opportunity to develop trust in you before their first purchase. The absolute least you should do is to make your trust policy public.

Write an ethics policy and post it in a high-trafficked location. Reprint it on marketing collateral, invoices and other communications.

Similarly, draft a motto for your company that condenses the essence of your ethic’s policy along with your unique selling proposition that sets you apart from competitors. Use and display your motto everywhere to reinforce your promise of trustworthiness.

(Posted March 2006)

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