How to Build Customer Trust and Loyalty

 

Why Customer Trust and Loyalty Matter

When it comes to building customer trust and loyalty, it requires consistent actions, transparency and a customer-centric approach.

Some of you may be thinking well, my products, my services?

I only have one or two.

You still have customers.

You still, even if you are monetizing solely via ads or solely via speaking, you still have customers.

The audience that is coming to you are those customers.

They are the ones that are going to continue to talk about you and get your name out there.

Although we are talking here using the word customer.

We’re also specifically talking about your audience in general.

How can you make sure to build trust and loyalty with them?

It’s really important we are looking at this because it is going to help with long-term profitability if you were able to build customer trust and loyalty, because they are going to continue to come back to you.

They are going to see you as that expert and they’re going to want to buy from the product suite that you offer.

They’re going to want to refer other people to you because they have seen the impact that you can make on their lives.

They want you to make it on their friends, their family.

We are looking for long-term success overall by building customer trust and loyalty.

Customer trust and loyalty is going to truly matter because it is going to increase retention rates.

In other words, people are going to stay with you longer and want to be in your realm, within your audience and consuming all of the content, the products that you offer.

By having that loyalty factor, you will end up finding that, from your audience, 80% of your income will likely come from 20% of your audience.

It’s that 80-20 rule that we’ve talked about on the podcast in the past and it comes from the fact that you have worked to build trust and loyalty with your customers.

It also is going to help be able to have brand advocacy from others, like we talked about.

It’s going to give that opportunity for others to want to be talking and referring your brand, your business, your company to others and it’s going to help the growth of your business.

Key Components of Customer Trust

There’s specific key components of customer trust.

The first is going to be transparency.

You have to be able to be open.

There needs to be that open communication about products, services and policies.

What is it that you stand by, stand for, what is your brand values?

What is your brand voice and tone?

That consistency is what is going to help continue to keep people in when you are transparent with them.

Your second thing is going to be your reliability.

Are you delivering consistent quality and keeping promises?

So, when you’re putting out content, is it just a bunch of stuff to fill the fluff or is it actually impactful?

Is it helping them solve their problems or is it just kind of doing what the social media norms think that you should be doing?

You really want to be looking at that reliability factor.

Next is going to be authenticity Staying true to your brand values and mission.

What is it that you are trying to do with your brand?

How are you trying to solve the problems for your audience?

Also staying true to that is going to be really important.

Then the fourth component of customer trust is empathy showing that you care about customers’ needs and concerns, and this is especially important when someone has purchased something and they may be having a customer service issue.

Maybe they don’t know how to log in, they don’t know where to find the answers for something.

This is where your systems are going to be really key.

Also the person that is going to be dealing with these customer concerns needs to be empathetic.

It can’t immediately be oh that’s your problem, you did it wrong.

It has to be.

I can understand how that can be confusing.

Here’s why we have this here and here’s where you can find the answer to your problem.

Therefore Making sure that the customer feels heard it’s that whole idea that the customer is always right.

Okay, so what are some strategies to build customer trust? 

Strategies to Build Customer Trust

1.Be Transparent:

We said that transparency was an important piece of this.

You have to be transparent.

You need to make sure that you share your information and your processes, the pricing and policies.

It needs to be part of your Q&A on a sales page.

What is your policy about returns?

What is your policy as far as referrals?

Do you have a referral policy so that you can continue to grow from word of mouth?

What does that look like?

You want to make sure that you are very clear on what these are.

Then you also want to make sure that if you do make a mistake, that you address it and provide solutions.

Don’t kind of try to throw it under the rug and blame someone else.

Be honest and open about it.

When I have made mistakes in my business, I’ve been very upfront with my clients, letting them know this is where I messed up, this is how we’re going to fix it.

Then I also often use it as a teaching opportunity so that they can see how the process I had may not have been exactly what it needed to be and how I went about fixing it, so they could learn from it as well.

2.Focus on Quality and Consistency:

When we are looking at making sure that we have quality and consistency throughout our content and our brand.

It’s important that we maintain high standards across all of our products and services, as well as our content, whether it is content that is coming out on social media, on a podcast, on YouTube.

We want to make sure that we are really making sure that we’re answering problems for people.

3.Engage in Active Listening:

We also want to make sure that we ensure brand messaging aligns with customer experiences so that if we are having and talking about our brand and talking about our values and our mission, that it is aligning with how people are feeling, which means that we need to be making sure that we get feedback, which goes into my third strategy to build customer trust, which is to engage in active listening.

You need to make sure that you are getting feedback, have an opportunity to fill out a form or to have those conversations.

This is a great opportunity to be able to also get testimonials and, at the same time, learn and respond to any issues that people are coming across when it comes to receiving a product.

You want to make sure that you are responding promptly to their questions and concerns and, obviously, with respect and empathy.

4.Build a Strong Online Reputation:

The next thing you can do to build trust and loyalty is to build a strong online reputation, which is what we are all about, right, making sure that our brand is showing up through our content, whether it is our website, it is social media, wherever it might be.

It’s to encourage and showcase positive reviews and testimonials so that if you are getting a testimonial, whether it is through video or if it’s an email, however that testimonial is coming, make sure that you showcase that and allow people to see that and you want to make sure that there are any negative reviews that you respond, obviously with professionalism and care.

5.Prioritize Data Privacy and Security:

For a lot of this we’re complying with regulations like GDPR and CCPA.

We’re making sure that we allow our content to be viewed in many different manners.

We have transcriptions if we do video, if we do audio.

We are providing opportunities for everyone to be able to consume our content.

We also are making sure that we are clearly explaining how our customer data is collected, stored and used, and we’re doing that with our policies that are on our website.

All of you should make sure that you have those policies that are there so that people can easily click and learn more about what it is and how you’re using any sort of information like that.

How to Foster Customer Loyalty

1.Offer Personalized Experiences:

The first thing you can do is offer personalized experiences.

Make it really tailored to their recommendations, so I try to do this within my insiders program.

I’m always asking for feedback on what questions they have, so that I can make sure that the strategies I’m teaching are tailored to what their questions are.

Making sure that it’s specific to many different industries and isn’t just specific to a food blogger or a travel blogger or a therapist, making sure that it can fit across many different niches.

2.Create a Loyalty Program:

You can also create a loyalty program, so I also do this as part of my programs.

If you are a mastermind member, you get a discount on my insiders program.

If you participate in IEA Summit, I will often give you a discount to become an insider.

I will also do this for my insiders coaching programs. So it’s that loyalty program where you’re offering discounts or extras for people.

I also do this with my retreat.

If you are an Insiders member for my in-person retreat, I give you a discount for that as well.

Because you are my people, I want to continue to have you around and that is how it’s going to continue to have that loyalty.

3.Deliver Outstanding Customer Service:

The third way that you can build that customer and really foster the loyalty is to deliver outstanding customer service.

You want to make sure that you can build that customer and really foster the loyalty is to deliver outstanding customer service.

You want to make sure that you’re training your teams to provide empathetic, solution-driven support, making sure that it’s accessible through multiple communication channels, whether that’s going to be direct messages.

Whether it is going to be via email or if it’s going to be getting on a phone call, you want to make sure that the messaging is very clear and concise, no matter who on your team is speaking to the individual.

4.Engage Through Community Building:

Next, for the loyalty factor, you want to engage through community building.

This is a great opportunity to be able to pull people into your world through free opportunities or even paid opportunities.

As an example, you can go about hosting events, a webinar or online groups to connect with customers.

I do this twice a year through IEA Summit. It’s an opportunity to have multiple speakers as well as to understand better what I do in my Insiders program, and it’s a free ticket.

You don’t have to get the paid ticket and I actually offer to all my insiders I offer them the EIT ticket for free.

Again, it goes back to that loyalty right being able to have a program where they are being rewarded for already being part of my community.

You want to make sure that you, within this, are also sharing user generated content and celebrating loyal customers.

If you’re an Unhinged member as well as an Insider, you know that I’m doing Insider Spotlights right now as part of the Unhinged podcast.

I’m sharing their wins and the amazing things that they’re doing within their business, and I’m able to do this because Insiders provide me with more ideas of what they are doing in their business, because I am behind the scenes helping them.

This is an opportunity to really give them that inside feeling and loyal customer that they are. 

5.Go Beyond Expectations:

The last thing that you want to do is to go beyond expectations.

You want to be able to provide them with unexpected perks or thank you gestures.

This can be as simple as a thank you note. It can be as simple as a shout out or a share, whatever that might look like for you. 

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Now, the last thing that I want to make sure we talk about this is common pitfalls to avoid.

You don’t want to over compromise or under deliver.

When we’re looking at this, over-promising can often be a problem.

If you tell them that you are absolutely going to be able to solve every single problem that they have, even though that may not be an actual thing, that can happen.

That can be a problem.

You want to be really clear that, yes, you offer a solution, but it doesn’t work for every single person.

It works for a percentage of people, and these are the circumstances that you need to have in order for it to happen.

You also don’t want to ignore negative feedback.

Failing to address those complaints can alienate loyal customers.

If you have someone that has said, hey, this isn’t really, I can’t find this information or I feel like I’m not getting the attention here that I need and not being able to gather more information about that and see how you can adjust your program, then that can be a problem.

I’ve gone through many variations of what insiders look like and how my mastermind programs are run.

You have to take the good with the bad feedback and be able to make a program that works well for your key audience, and the last thing that you don’t want to do is to neglect post-sale engagement.

Once you have someone that is a customer, you want to make sure that you are continuing to engage them, that you’re asking them for their feedback.

You’re checking in with them to make sure that you are continuing to engage them, that you’re asking them for their feedback.

You’re checking in with them to make sure that they are getting their answers from the content that they’ve already purchased, so that they will likely find another product that they also may need help with if you have multiple products that answer different pieces of problems that they may have.

Really starting to think about how can you diversify everything that you do is going to help you overall.

All right, if you haven’t already grabbed your strategic plan guide, I want to make sure that you do so right now.

Just go to your podcasting app and you’ll see that they’re linked as well as become an Unhinged listener, I am telling you right now, it is the podcast for you, where you are getting three different episodes dropped weekly, and it’s going to give you accountability and strategies that you need in order to move the needle forward.