Here are the qualities you need to keep your clients happy. Price, reliability and quality are three things you most definitely need to offer as a supplier. Disappoint your clients or be outperformed by your competitors in any of these areas, and you’ll likely have a hard time getting your repeat business.
But that’s not the only thing you’ll need to offer as the best vendor. To gain and maintain client trust, you’ll need to consistently deliver high quality service and product. Here are six qualities you’ll want to be sure your business is providing to gain and maintain client trust and brand loyalty:
Client Happiness
“You can have the most professional and trustworthy business, but if you don’t make them feel good about their purchase, you won’t last very long in business. In today’s marketplace, word-of-mouth recommendations, social media, and a positive overall experience are absolutely the best ways to get new clients,” explains Michael Zimbalist, of Zimbalist Marketing. When your clients come back for more, and they stay engaged through multiple purchases, they’ll become your repeat client, and you’ll be able to gain their trust.
This is especially true for services you can perform in-person. When customers visit your store, do they have the positive experience they hoped for? Did they find what they needed? Was your staff kind and helpful? Or did they have to work with a frustrating experience or a confusing system?
At the same time, you’ll want to make sure that all aspects of your business are providing a positive experience. A good example of this is a service you may provide in-person, such as an appliance repair. While the customer is being greeted, is the service staff welcoming and friendly? Are they able to make eye contact and listen to customer feedback? Even if the customer hasn’t asked for a repair, do they feel comfortable with a follow-up phone call or visit?
When clients come back and you’re able to deliver what they were hoping for, they’ll be extremely happy and satisfied, and you’ll gain and maintain their trust and loyalty.
Customer Service
When someone buys something from you, they need to feel like they’re getting a good experience. If you’re having issues with shipping, billing, or any aspect of your service, you’re not providing a positive experience for your clients.
Your customers won’t return if they feel they are being treated unfairly, with a poor quality product, or if you’re not giving them a positive experience. And they’ll also not return if they have a bad customer service experience. It’s important to be responsive to clients and issues they are having, and to make sure you’re always keeping your clients in the loop so they can receive the best service possible.
Additionally, it’s important to deliver on your promises. For example, if you say you’ll deliver something on a specific date, make sure you deliver. If you need more time, let your client know, and let them know again when the item arrives. If it takes a little longer than expected, tell them what is taking longer, and if you can’t explain it, make it clear that you will work on it.
If you can’t deliver on your promises, your clients will go elsewhere, or won’t be happy with your business. With the right attitude and responsiveness, you’ll gain and maintain their trust.
Reliability
While a positive customer service experience will help clients feel good about purchasing from your business, your clients will expect you to deliver consistently well. For example, they expect you to deliver on time, as promised. They don’t want to receive a package they expect to arrive on a certain date, only to find out you didn’t send it on time, or it didn’t get delivered at all. If this happens, the customer will be extremely unhappy, and will not come back to your store.
So while it’s critical to make sure your customers feel happy and comfortable, it’s also critical to make sure you deliver on your promises. And by taking the time to do your research on shipping and delivery dates, and providing a positive experience during delivery, you can provide your clients with a positive experience, and gain and maintain their trust.
Quality
Once you’ve gained and maintained client trust by providing the right experience and reliability, you’ll want to make sure that you’re providing your clients with high quality products. You’ll want to make sure you’re producing high quality service that is consistent with your brand and values.
While it’s great to offer top quality products and service, your clients will want to feel good about the products they are purchasing. So while you’ll want to keep your prices competitive and your products of high quality, it’s important to make sure you provide a high quality product or service. By selling high quality products, your clients will feel good about their purchase, and you’ll gain and maintain their trust.
This also applies to your products. If you are a local business with local customers, then it is more important that your products are made in the U.S.A. or U.K., than if they’re made in China. If your products are produced in China, you may be able to get a better price for your products, but you will lose your local client base.
When you are providing your products, service, and customer experience, you’ll gain and maintain client trust and loyalty.
Convenience
“The biggest problem in business is getting new clients,” says Zimbalist. When your clients can buy your products or services from any of the major online retailers, it makes it extremely convenient for them to buy from your business. So if you want to gain and maintain your clients’ trust, make sure you provide your services and products in a way that allows your clients to buy from you.
This is also true for on-demand services you provide. For example, if you provide website design services, but you’re not making it easy for your clients to buy your services, you’ll likely lose clients to the competition. It’s important that your clients feel comfortable with buying your services, and don’t feel like they are having to jump through too many hoops.
You should also make it easy for your clients to sell to you as well. As an example, when you are an eBay seller, they allow you to post items for sale, and even let you pick the location and price. This allows you to gain easy client trust, and allows your clients to sell to you, or for you, quickly and easily.
So while convenience is very important, so is ease of use.
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