Building customer trust is the cornerstone of every successful business. But, when you’re first starting out, how do you get people to trust you? My own experience is that if people like you and trust you, they’ll do business with you. As long as you can competently speak about your industry and offerings, they are often willing to give you a chance. In a world where trust is at a premium, if you’ll work diligently at building customer trust above all else, your business will run smoother, and you’ll have more work than you can handle.
The Perspective Shift
The first thing you need is a little bit of a perspective shift. If you’re not now, you need to become very “customer-centric.” Recognize, completely and unequivocally, that without customers, you don’t have a business. You can engage in all kinds of marketing and advertising to generate leads and sales, but if you don’t master the attitude of true customer service, you’ll always be fighting an uphill battle.
Let’s say you do business with 10 people and none of them were happy with your service. Maybe communication was a nightmare. Maybe a worker was late, rude, or made promises that weren’t kept. It would only take one of these issues to leave a sour taste. How did this affect your business? Hold that thought.
Let’s now say that you do business with another 10 people, and things went well. You communicated clearly, and solved problems quickly. How do these customers feel about your business? They trust you.
The issue of trust always pays huge dividends, either positively or negatively. The first set of customers will probably never use your firm again, will never refer you to family and friends, and could be inspired to share their negative experience with others. The second set are happy, and would likely refer you to others. A happy customer is worth anywhere from 1 to 3 additional referral clients. Think the reverse is true? You bet it is.
A Simple Path To Building Customer Trust
I’ve pulled together a list of 5 powerful, effective ways to build customer trust that have worked really well for my businesses over the years. Our customers have always been really happy, and these principles have served us remarkably well, and generated a ton of business over the years. I’ll warn you in advance that the ideas are not revolutionary, and are relatively simple. But, just because they’re simple doesn’t mean they’re easy to do.
Always Do What You Say You'll Do
This one aspect of building customer trust is at the top of my list because it’s the core of customer trust. If you don’t do what you say you’ll do, you’re simply not trustworthy, period. Now, I’m not necessarily saying that you’re not trustworthy. What I am saying is that you, as the owner, are responsible for everything that happens in the company, and any perception of unfulfilled promises will reflect poorly.
To enhance your reputation as a trustworthy company, every interaction with the customer must be handled with extreme care. What you say matters. How you say it matters. This is why most companies with a solid reputation rely on careful scripting for customer interaction.
You don’t need to be too rigid, but you do need solid, reliable procedures for what gets done, how long it takes to do it, and how much it costs. I recommend to our small business clients that they carefully map out a standard operating procedure for each service they offer:
- What's the average cost?
- How long does it normally take to complete?
- What can possibly go wrong?
- What is included?
- What is NOT included?
- Are there upgrades?
- How long is the work and material warranted for?
- How is the warranty activated?
Having a standard operating procedure for each service you offer will take some time to map out, but it provides excellent benefits to both you and the customer by making sure that your services are delivered consistently, and professionally, each time.
Always Under-Promise and Over-Deliver
After you’ve created a clear roadmap for each service, look for areas where you can exceed customer expectations. Each one of the bullet points above offers an opportunity to surprise and delight a customer and build more trust. For example, if you can surprise the customer with a slightly smaller final invoice than was originally quoted, complete the job slightly ahead of schedule, include something that wasn’t mentioned up front, or solve a problem quickly, you’ll go a long way toward building customer trust.
Will under-promising and over-delivering cost the company money? It certainly could, and often will, but you should consider it an investment, and a wise one. Let’s say that you somehow spent $100 in time or materials to delight and build trust with each customer, and you completed 100 jobs in a year. You will have invested $10,000 in building customer trust. Now remember that a happy customer is much more likely to use you again or refer you to a family or friend. How much is that worth? I can tell you as a marketing professional that there are very few marketing and advertising strategies that will get you a better return on investment.
Always Make Communication A Top Priority
Like most people, I prefer to do business with a local company. Unfortunately, communication is where most small businesses fail. I’ve literally had companies call me back after the job I was calling about was completed! The company that most often gets my business is the one that actually answers the phone.
For the small business owner, top-notch communication can be a challenge. Recent research suggests that 94% of consumers value speed of communication as a big factor in building overall customer trust (AcquireIO).
Now, you might be a sole proprietor out in the field, doing the work yourself. You might not have the resources for a paid receptionist or call center at the beginning, but I strongly urge you to make sacrifices in this area. Here are some tips:
- Always answer the phone.
- Use a dedicated line for all customer calls.
- Hire a reliable person to answer customer calls.
- Respond to customer emails in hours, not days.
- Used a dedicated account for customer emails, and enable alerts.
- Use auto-responses to all email enquiries.
If you’ll resolve to make communications a top priority for your small business, you’ll be building customer trust each time you answer the phone or respond to an email.
As a general rule of thumb, if a customer reaches out to you via phone, they probably expect a phone call. Likewise for email. Match their communication expectations, and this will help you to build further trust.
Always Be Willing To Give Before You Get
As consumers, our trust level is at an all-time low, and as business owners, we need to build trust before clients are willing to consider us to handle their needs. A big part of building customer trust is by generating good-will up front, and there are lots of ways to do it.
One way that many service-based businesses handle this is to offer a free quote for a job. While this is a great idea, it’s really become expected by consumers. Perhaps you could offer a similar service, but rebrand it, and throw in a little perk? If you were a roofer, for example, you could not only assess the job, but also provide a computer generated image of their home with different roofing materials / colors.
One of the most important ways you can build trust is to offer consumers information. We recommend filling your blog and social media pages with lots of information that would be truly helpful for customers. This builds trust before they even contact you about pricing. And, speaking of pricing. . .
One of the best ways of building customer trust is to offer up-front pricing. They should be able to get this information on your website. It doesn’t matter if every job is different. Show them a range of pricing. Don’t worry about your competitors figuring out how much you offer. They probably know already anyway. If you don’t show potential customers at least a range of prices for your services, your competition will. Get there first, and build their trust.
Share The Trust You've Built
As a new business owner building customer trust, once you’ve earned some, you need to share it far and wide. You should display the results you’ve achieved with other clients. This is most commonly done through reviews and testimonials.
As you build your reputation (and local SEO rankings!), customer reviews are absolutely essential. However, if you don’t ask for the reviews, you won’t get them. Create a nice message thanking them for their business and letting them know that happy customers are the life-blood of your operation, and you’d be delighted if they’d just write a sentence or two about you online. They’ll be happy to do it.
The next stage of this display of trust is the testimonial video. After you’ve got some great reviews under your belt, look through the reviews and select your happiest, most raving fan of your business. Ask them about doing a quick testimonial video for you. We’ve written another article about how to get great testimonials videos you should check out if you’re interested.
Keep Customer Trust Alive!
If you follow these simple guidelines, you’ll be building customer trust in your business, and things will run smoother, and people will share their experience with friends, family, and colleagues. As you grow, maintaining this level of dedication to customer service will become more difficult. However, if you make a commitment to these principles and dedicate the resources necessary to make it happen, you’ll never lack for work. Your work will also be much more rewarding.
