Customer trust is the foundation of any business; if customers believe in the brand, it will prosper. Customers that are discerning hold businesses to certain criteria, comparable to how they create social ties and invest in favourable connections. Our touch SMS team has seen several instances of how concentrating on brand trust drives customer involvement and how such connections are vital in expanding a company.
A company’s goal should be to bridge the trust gap, and one of the greatest methods to do so is to communicate with consumers by text message, notably Bulk SMS. Why should text-based marketing communications be at the heart of your brand’s customer satisfaction objectives? You may be surprised by the answers.
Continue reading to find out why this strategy efficiently engages individuals, promotes brand loyalty, and cultivates trustworthy relationships with new and current consumers.
How Modern Consumer Trust Functions
Before we dig into SMS initiatives to increase consumer trust in a business, there are a few more factors to consider based on customer experiences.
Over half of customers consider trust in a firm as the second most important factor after the price of a product or service. As a result, for businesses that compete solely on price, trust serves as a major distinction. In fact, almost three-quarters of customers believe that being able to trust a company is even more crucial now because the epidemic has shifted interactions to the digital domain.
Many consumers will abandon a business that abuses their loyalty, whether via unappealing product changes, bad leadership choices, or dubious data collecting or handling. These variables have a huge impact on public opinion of the company, especially when it comes to sensitive data. Over 80% of consumers want to see a clear relationship between their provided data and the advantages derived from that choice; they are suspicious of providing personal information and want businesses to demonstrate their desire to safeguard it.
Why Do You Need Customer Loyalty and Trust?
Over the previous decade, most businesses shifted from retail to subscription models since maintaining existing customers costs much less than recruiting new ones. Long-term connections are one of the most profitable aspects of these loyalty-based organisations. Client retention is more lucrative than pursuing one-time transactions, yet customer acquisition expenditures have virtually risen in recent years.
Because the statistics favour this method, it seems to be a smart idea to save money via subscription or loyalty schemes. But why is trust so important for a brand’s long-term growth? Consider how brands might enhance earnings by using dependable trust-building mechanisms:
Concurrent consumers buy more often, and sales rise. Customers that trust a brand recommend others, resulting in cost-free organic growth.Consistent consumers tend to spend more than first-time visitors and may form the income stream’s backbone.
It’s simple to understand why creating trust in a firm is so lucrative. Using SMS text messages or communication methods to tap into this link is a good alternative for local businesses.
How SMS text messages Can Increase Consumer Trust
Is an SMS really so effective? There are five ways that this marketing tool is helping to acquire, facilitate, and keep client trust in every sector.
Customer Service That Is Responsive
Interacting with customer service is aggravating for customers, particularly when the assistance they get is delayed or ineffective. Customers are being driven away by roadblocks such as pre-help teleprompters or waiting hours to obtain suitable assistance, and dissatisfied customers rapidly lose faith in the business. There are, thankfully, remedies.
An SMS, for example, enables a corporation to quickly address support concerns and initiate a two-way dialogue between a support staff and their concerned consumer. Younger generations have extensively embraced this strategy to overcome communication problems, often choosing real-time text-based conversations to crackling phone calls or aggravating hold music.
SMS also provides some specific benefits for making clients feel at ease:
- SMS is practically ubiquitous, familiar, and simple to use.
- SMS eliminates the necessity to browse a perplexing gateway in order to reach a support network.
- Customers may respond to SMS text messages at their leisure.
- As required, SMS enables support professionals to react to various consumers.
- SMS, as opposed to phone or email, allows for quicker answers, shorter response times, and overall happier clients.
Alerts, Reminders, and Special Offers
Thinking about ways to satisfy clients before they realise they need a product or service is part of properly communicating with them. Is your brand able to properly forecast what it can accomplish for customers before they express a desire for it? Helpful reminders and SMS notifications cut through the clutter for consumers who are too preoccupied with work, family, and life to consider purchase choices.
Using SMS to anticipate these transactions provides customers with knowledge about what is available without adding to the stress associated with information overload. Successful SMS text messages notifications include the following:
Limited-time offer notifications: When ordering from a restaurant, UberEats and other meal delivery firms tell clients about possibilities to spend less for fees or deliveries.
Appointments in doctors’ offices and hospitals: Have you received texts from your doctor confirming a scheduled appointment? Patients may get scheduling information and other information via this way of communication. It is also an excellent technique to increase client trust by creating the impression that the service is very competent.
Reminders for restaurant reservations: Restaurants often send reservation reminders a few hours before the planned time. It ensures that guests do not miss their reservations while also allowing the restaurant to retain tables available if you fail to show up.
Emergency store closures: Weather or power outages might abruptly shut down operations. A brief SMS message is a simple and inexpensive approach to notify consumers of the closure and prevent them from showing up at the door. It is also useful for informing consumers about an outage and preventing backlogs in customer support channels.
No-shows waste resources, even if it means sparing a slot that may have gone to another waiting consumer. Automating reminders through SMS is quite beneficial in this regard.
Customer Feedback and Reviews
Favorable customer reviews have a positive influence on loyalty since potential consumers evaluate your brand’s value to those in the know. Customers often look at customer feedback before deciding where to direct their business, and consumer trust grows with a consistent flow of positive customer evaluations to help improve your company’s reputation.
Acquiring feedback is not always straightforward, but there are a few alternatives to waiting for clients to commence the process on their own. As an example, consider the meal delivery applications mentioned above. Apps like GrubHub will ask clients to evaluate an order thirty minutes after getting it; statistically, this is when customers are most satisfied with the service.
The approach extends to a variety of additional contexts, such as delivering review prompts to clients immediately after they have opened a package or paid for products or services. These are the times closer to when the brand meets a consumer’s demands and are more likely to compel a customer to react (hopefully, positively). Customers will want to tell others why they love the product or service while the sensation is still fresh, therefore this is an excellent technique.
Some businesses depend too much on push alerts, yet consumers often turn them off to avoid spam. SMS bridges this gap since finding the right moment to communicate with your customer base is half the fight. SMS and similar messages demand attention while allowing for a soft selling strategy that does not scare or require the client to reply.
Digital Safety
The danger of a data breach rises in direct proportion to consumer engagement, and businesses should go above and beyond to secure customer data, a practise known as data trust. Customers will prefer a service over a competition if they know the firm takes safeguards.
Even multi-factor or two-factor authentication may help in this respect (it creates a second step for a user to confirm their identity before logging in). SMS text messages is often used in two-factor authentication, providing a one-time code to the client as the secure step for signing in or utilising a new device.
Networks for Promotions, Rewards, and Referrals
Another wonderful strategy to increase consumer trust is to reinforce client retention through advocates, such as devoted customers. Does your firm encourage consumers to tell their friends about your product? Nine out of 10 individuals are more inclined to follow the advice of family or friends, particularly if the alternative is to explore for choices on their own.
VIP and rewards programmes provide a fantastic chance for a company to retain consumers and establish loyalty by providing persistent users with value they value. Some firms, for example, provide a free, limited-edition shirt or another tempting item after spending a specific amount or attaining a certain loyalty tier.
The essence of every rewards programme is what consumers find special and what they want. However, it is also dependent on what your business can afford. Combining incentives with things like referral links guarantees that consumers share the brand’s product with their friends while also increasing the attractiveness of the rewards system you’re providing.
Why not consider launching a rewards programme through SMS messages? Invite customers to join the programme and explain the benefits. Offer incentives for each new buddy they bring on board, and utilise the SMS contact to be creative about how you mix these incentives successfully.
Connect with touchSMS text messages Today to Increase Customer Trust
What does your company excel at? With services like touchSMS to simplify the communication channel, it is simpler to gain traction with high-quality SMS text messages infrastructure. It is a wonderful technique to interact and create client trust while investigating ways to capitalise on your brand’s most appealing attributes.