Gaining Customer Trust and Brand Loyalty
The key to any successful business relationship is trust. When a customer trusts your brand, they become loyal to the brand, buy more of its products, and are more likely to recommend it to friends and family.
Customer trust is based on the following:
1. Actions: What is the company’s vision? Will it have a positive impact on society and the economy in the long run?
2. Ethics: What are the company’s ethical policies like? Does it take responsibility for its actions?
3. Relationships: How does the company engage with its customers? Does it have a strong presence in traditional and digital media?
In consistency, we trust
Consistency in the quality of products and services is of utmost importance. To get customers to pay for your offered products/services, there must be meaningful benefits for them. Find out what the target group wants, and try your best to incorporate those features into your product. The benefits offered to customers must be equal to or more than the product’s cost. Doing this on a frequent basis will increase loyalty towards the brand.
In fact, even consistency in sending digital newsletters helps develop trust and fulfill expectations.
Actions
To keep a customer loyal to your brand, you need them to trust you completely. Thus, the vision of the company, i.e., what it aims to achieve in the long run comes under scrutiny. Whether a company only aims to get richer, or to give back to society is quite a powerful deciding factor for consumers.
Based on the 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer , the top three actions as per respondents that leads them to distrust a company are:
1. Bribing government officials to win contracts
2. Paying executives in the company far more than regular employees
3. Moving profits offshore to avoid taxes
Ethics
In order to grain customer loyalty, brand manufacturers must be completely transparent — whether it is about the process of manufacturing, the contents of the products, etc. It is transparency that leads to trust. Even if a mistake is made, when customers see the brand owning up to it and offering a solution, rather than avoiding or denying the issue, it leads to them trusting the brand.
The 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer, a yearly trust and credibility survey, saw that 59% respondents recommended a company to friends and family, and 75% said that their peers warn them about risks or help them make decisions. Thus, it is in the company’s best interests to not lie to their customers or to hide information, as it would lead to mistrust and a lack of credibility.
Relationships
Customers today are connected to others via the internet. This means that they can get whatever information they want, whenever they want. They have complete access to information about companies and their products and procedures, and they believe that any company they deal with must be authentic and reliable. A company must aim to be the place customers go to when they need information on the industry.
The best way to be in the good books of a customer is to constantly engage with them, understand the target group, find what they expect from the brand, and work on it. Even if a brand has negative reviews, if addressed and acted upon, can get loyal customers, as it shows a willingness to understand and serve the customer, which leads to brand loyalty.
The role of Market Research
Market research can help generate brand loyalty as it involves getting information directly from customers. When done right, market research can help a company understand what its customers expect from the brand — not just in the case of product portfolio, but also in the case of the company’s actions. Market research also finds out what customers like and dislike about a particular brand or product, and why. By knowing what they think of your competitors’ offerings as compared to yours, you can always improve upon what you offer.
This is a gold mine of information, as it helps the company chart out its future. Based on the responses from the surveys, companies can decide how they can alter products or actions to appease to customers and get their support. When you know your customers, you can change your sales and marketing methods to give them what they need. This, in turn, shows a willingness to understand the customer, thus fostering trust in the brand.
Conclusion
The key to any business’ success is its relationship with its customers. Any business that truly treats the customer as king stands to benefit in the long run. This includes understanding your customer through market research, i.e., gaining information about their buying habits.
By showing customers how you are working towards the greater good (societal, economical, and environmental), upholding your core values and morals, and by directly engaging with customers, a brand can easily build a healthy relationship with their customers.
