How Do You Win a Customer’s Trust?

What does it take to get customers to trust you?

17:46 22 December 2021

If you want to win more business, earn more customer loyalty, and have better brand-consumer relationships overall, you need to win your customers’ trust. Customers who trust you are going to make more purchases. They’ll be less likely to switch to a competitor. They’ll leave better reviews, interact with your brand more on social media, and will even evangelize your brand to others – helping you drum up new business in the process.

 

The question is, what does it take to win a customer’s trust? What steps can you take to make them trust you?

 

Building Trust: It Takes Time

First, you should know that it takes time to build trust with customers, the same way it takes time to build trust with anyone. You trust your best friend of 20 years more than you trust a new acquaintance he met last week, and you trust that new acquaintance you met last week more than you trust a stranger on the street. If you want to foster more trusting customers, you'll need years of time on your hands.

 

Fortunately, there are also some shortcuts that can artificially boost trust in the short term, while you're trying to establish those long term relationships.

 

The Foundation of Customer Trust

If you want to build customer trust, there are some things that you'll need to have at the center of your business, such as:

 

• Excellent products and services. A new company needs to have excellent products and services to build any level of consumer trust. If your devices break easily or if they stop working after a couple of weeks, nobody is going to trust your brand with anything. Before you focus too heavily on messaging or your marketing strategy, make sure your quality is on point.
  
  
• Active brand involvement (and exposure). Thanks to the mere exposure effect, people have a psychological preference for the things they're most familiar with. In other words, the more they see and interact with your brand, the more they're going to like and trust it. Obviously, you can't use that as an excuse to spam your customers over and over with your brand and messaging, since that would only annoy them. But it is valuable to make sure your brand is consistently visible and to stay in contact with your customers frequently.
  
  
• Transparency and honesty. Operate your company in a transparent and honest way. Answer questions directly and concisely when people ask them. When your company makes a mistake, admit it and apologize. The more open you are, even when you're discussing flaws and mistakes, the more people will come to trust you.
  
  
• Respectable values. Also think about your company values and your brand culture. If your core values include things like personal integrity and telling the truth, customers will pick up on that and they'll trust you more. You may even want to think about your hiring and operational practices, to ensure the public views them as fair and trustworthy.
  
  
• Stellar customer service. Even the best companies, with the best products, sometimes have customers with grievances. This is a critical opportunity to prevent lost trust and build trust with others. When customers come to you with problems and complaints, provide them with the best customer service you can and try to make up for the bad experience when possible.

 

Shortcuts to Trust

It takes years to build trust with a new customer, so if you want to close the sale now, that makes things difficult. Fortunately, these shortcuts can help you close the gap:

 

• Human faces. Photos of human faces tend to be seen as likable and trustworthy. If you include a few pictures of people on your landing page, you'll be much more likely to get conversions.
  
  
• Ratings, reviews, and testimonials. People trust other people more than they trust brands, especially initially. Take advantage of that by showcasing ratings, reviews, and testimonials that put your brand in a positive light.
  
  
• Trust badges, affiliations, and partnerships. Don't be afraid to show off the affiliations and partnerships you have with other trustworthy brands. A handful of well-placed trust badges can instantly make your brand seem more legitimate.
  
  
• Performance statistics. You can also make people trust you by showcasing performance statistics in a logical demonstration. For example, if 95 percent of your customers end up saving at least $100 by switching to your brand, your customers will be much more likely to take what you have to say seriously.

 

It's not always easy to build customer trust, but with the right strategies and the right mindset, any business can eventually develop an advantage over its competitors. Get to know your customers as well as you can, use helpful shortcuts to generate trust immediately, and make it a priority to establish a strong business foundation that encourages consumer trust for many years.