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Ali Bendersky is Salesforce 360
The key to building more trust with customers? become more human.
Marketing guru Seth Godin and Salesforce VP and global innovation evangelist Brian Solis share their views on how to build customer trust.
For many companies, being seen as trustworthy by customers is the ultimate goal. But what does it really mean to build trust with your customers and build that trust?
in a recent conversation Blazing Trails PodcastMarketing guru Seth Godin and Salesforce VP and global innovation evangelist Brian Solis discuss issues of trust and how companies can better understand their customers.
a theme? Just be human.
Here are the findings of the fifth edition of Salesforce Status of the associated customer, a global survey of nearly 17,000 consumer and business buyers in 29 countries. According to Solis, 71% of consumers surveyed said they had changed brands at least once this year.
“If you ask them what is the most important thing they want to see from brand engagement, it’s honest and transparent communication,” Solis said. “Another thing on the list: Treat me as a person, not a number.”
If you’re thinking about how to get your business to do more, here are a few places to start.
Create experiences to build better trust
During a pandemic, people have more time to think about what makes them happy. This creates an opportunity for businesses to focus on relationships and build better experiences — not just promoting products or services.
“Experience should always be a priority,” Solis said. “When we think of the word experience, what we’re really saying is people want to feel better when they’re interacting with you. They want to feel valued when they’re in a situation, or their time is respected, or their expectations are met, or the business exceeds those expectations.”
When customers have a great experience and feel valued by the brand, they come back. But what if they had a negative experience? People will go away quickly. If the experience is just mediocre, you may be forgotten.
“Obviously, the advantage is building a relationship with the customer like you would with anyone else and making them feel better,” Solis said.
Make things personal, not personal
Over the years, many companies have gotten better at segmenting customers by demographics and data points. But all this information doesn’t necessarily lead customers to feel that these companies really understand their experience.
“Nobody wants everything to be personalized,” Godin said. “They want it to be personal, which are two completely different things.”
Companies that are more successful in personalization don’t just have a 360-degree view of their customers. They also use this point of view, with a focus on actually benefiting the customer.
“What we do as marketers is spend all this time deanonymizing people, snooping on them and cookieing them, and then just using that information to help them, not customers,” Godin said. “Instead, what we do is say, ‘What is the story this person wants to tell themselves and how can we maintain an appropriate personal relationship with them with their permission?’ Rather than, ‘What is simple, systematic , database-driven solution, so I can fix this and go back to what I did yesterday?'”
State your values - and live by them
The State of the Connected Consumer report shows that 66% of customers say they have stopped doing business with a company whose value is not aligned with its value, up from 62% last year. This is just the latest sign of not only communicating your business values, but acting in a way that makes those stated values truly credible among customers.
“Some companies are good at telling stories and showing consumers they’re living their values, but many companies, especially public companies, feel trapped and have no choice but to cut corners and think it’s their job,” Goldin said. Say.
If you don’t live by your company’s values, you risk losing customers to competitors who do. While every employee has a role to play in it, it usually starts at the executive level.
“What I want to say to the board, to the CEO, to the affiliates, to anyone is, ‘Who do we want to be? Who’s the role model here? Who’s ahead of us, or who’s standing near us, like that? Did you do it right?'” Godin said.
Listen to the full podcast episode here.
