Consumers have trust issues! Less than a quarter of Americans have significant trust in their neighbors while fewer than one in ten trust the news media or US government. When it comes to businesses, only 34% of consumers trust most of the brands they patronize.
A lack of consumer trust can affect your reputation and bottom line. 67% of consumers will stop buying from brands they don’t trust. As a new decade begins, we take a look at how you can earn and deepen trust with today’s customers.
Keep Your Promises
Chances are you’ve pledged to deliver products on time or to always offer low prices. Keeping your promise to customers can help you earn their trust, as 69% say it’s very important brands deliver consistently on what they promise. When you fail to keep your promise, consumers become disappointed and lose faith in your brand. Here are a few ways to strive toward constant promise fulfillment:
Empower Your Employees: Create a service culture where every employee feels accountable for the customer experience. Ensure your employees understand the promises you make to your customers and give them the permission, resources, and training to deliver on customer expectations.
Listen and Take Action: Conduct customer surveys to see if you’re keeping your promises or breaking them. When conducting your survey, ask open-ended questions to get honest feedback. Questions to ask your customers include:
- What does our brand promise to deliver to you when you buy it?
- Do we deliver on that promise every time you interact with our brand?
Use the feedback you get to determine what adjustments you need to make to deliver on your brand promise.
Remember Ethics
Today’s consumers are increasingly being guided by their values, and 49% of them trust brands that manufacture products in an ethically responsible way. Being an ethical brand not only helps you build trust with consumers but also actively influences them to buy from you. Below are three ways you can exhibit ethical behavior.
Be Transparent: Be clear about where your products come from and help customers learn about your company’s operations by furnishing a supply chain map. British retailer brand Marks and Spencer offers an interactive map that allows customers to see where its products are made.
You can also publish the list of suppliers and companies you work with to show consumers that you’re committed to maintaining an ethical supply chain. Also, audit your suppliers to ensure they don’t use force or trafficked labor in their factories.
Don’t Harm the Environment: Show consumers you care about the environment by using eco-friendly packaging, reducing carbon footprints that come with last-mile delivery, and sustainably sourcing the materials used in your products. Look out for environmental certifications that show your brand is eco-friendly and place them on your packaging.
Have a Mission Beyond Profit: Use your business as a force for good by giving back to communities, and engage customers by enlisting them in the causes you support. Warby Parker’s Buy a Pair, Give a Pair program builds a significant charitable contribution into each customer purchase.
You can also show the difference you’ve made across the world by publishing an impact report. In it, include real-life stories and case studies from beneficiaries to give customers a comprehensive picture of your philanthropic efforts.
Protect Customer Data
Since retailers hold a lot of customer data, cybercriminals are always on the hunt for vulnerable databases. In 2019, there were 234 breaches in the retail sphere. Consequently, consumers are mindful of their personal data and trust brands that can keep their data safe. 73% of consumers find brands that protect their data reliable.
Here are three strategies to help keep your customer data safe.
Reduce Human Error: Many breaches are a result of employees accidentally exposing customer data. Set up cybersecurity awareness and training programs so your employees can protect themselves against cyberattacks. Have a strong password and mobile device management policy to prevent cybercriminals from gaining access to your resources through personal devices used by your employees.
Invest in the Right Tools: Hackers today target retailers through new and improved methods. Embrace new technologies like artificial intelligence to identify threats in real-time and respond faster to breaches. Invest in technology such as EMV and mobile wallets to prevent cybercriminals from using malware to steal payment card information.
Engage a Cybersecurity Expert: Cybersecurity experts can help you find unresolved backdoors in your systems. Consider bringing in an ethical hacker to find weak spots in your infrastructure that cybercriminals may use to get into your business. If you go this route, choose someone with well-regarded industry certifications.
Treat Your Employees Well
While Gen Z and millennials are less trustful of the average company, you can gain their trust by treating your employees better than required by law. Apple, one of the most trusted brands in America, pays employees higher wages than its industry peers. Below are some additional tips on how to treat your employees well in 2020.
Stand Up for Equality: Ensure all your employees are given equal opportunities and pay without discrimination. Conduct a gender and ethnic pay gap analysis to identify disparities across employees with similar roles, locations, and performance. If you find any unfair pay gaps, close them as soon as you can.
Pay Well: If there’s anything to be learned from McDonald’s workers’ strike, it’s that you need to pay workers a living wage. Offer salaries that synch with the cost of living and provide workers with a generous benefits package. Pay wages that are appropriate for qualifications, experience, performance, and employee contribution, in line with industry averages.
Provide Work-Life Balance: Show your customers that you care about your employees by having a flexible work culture such as a four-day workweek, and don’t encourage working overtime. Chocolate manufacturer Hershey, also among America’s most trusted brands, has a SmartFlex policy that allows its employees to work anywhere, anytime, with any device.
Implement wellness programs to promote healthy living and decrease employee turnover. Before launching work-life balance initiatives, talk to your employees to understand what’s important to them.
Treat Your Customers Well
How you treat your customers determines if they’ll trust your brand or not. 68% of consumers trust brands that treat customers well. By treating its customers like royalty and ensuring they get their deliveries on time, Amazon has earned the trust of 39% of consumers. Use these tips to bring your customer trust way up, affecting loyalty and sales alike.
Put Your Customers First: Build a culture around putting customer interests first. Use consumer analytics to uncover trends in customer behavior, and adjust your product offerings to suit their needs. Ensure your employees see their customers as the company’s number one priority and give them the tools to personalize the customer experience at every point.
Make Your Customer Feel Valued: Thank customers for their patronage with personalized messages, send them unexpected perks, or check in with them to see how they like their purchase. When you get feedback from customers, let them know it was received and that you intend to act on it.
Conclusion
In a world where trust is fast declining, you need more than quality products to gain trust with today’s consumers. Understand what drives trust for your customers in order to know which elements to highlight and invest in. Once you’ve identified the factors that are important to your customers, include them in your messaging and marketing campaigns.