Do you want to build more trust in your customers? Have you ever admitted a mistake you’ve made in your business? The ability to establish customer loyalty depends on your ability to show full transparency–which includes your mistakes.
Here’s six reasons why making mistakes can lead to long-term customer loyalty.
It creates authenticity
It’s a fact to face — no one is perfect, and the same truth applies in the business world. With that said, it’s only natural that as a business we are bound to make the odd mistake no matter how big or small. Showing authenticity can simply mean having the ability to be genuine in both business practices and in your customer service, which includes mistakes you have made along the way. There are numerous ways your business can show how it is authentic when it’s made a mistake with customers. Here’s a few ways:
- Admitting to the mistake when servicing customers
- Admitting to mistakes made with your product or service
- Admitting to mistakes made in your communication
Besides making mistakes, your business can also showcase its authenticity through storytelling. This means make sure your story is an accurate representation of how you do business and origins.
It builds customer trust
Admitting mistakes increase trust and shows that your business has nothing to hide. While we all view making mistakes is a bad thing, it does have its positives — especially when it comes to your customers. By admitting your mistakes it allow your customers to see the more human side of your brand. With regards to customer service, it helps to prevent any further frustration of your customers. Don’t ignore them or the issues at hand, simply opening up and admitting to any mistakes you have made shows your customers you are willing to take responsibility for your actions and you’re working towards a solution.
While this approach may not be 100% pleasing for customers, it presents them with a reason for any issues caused and lets them know you are a business they can trust, as you openly admit when errors have been made. This kind of trust can increase your strength in the relationship with your customers, which leads to higher confidence in your business and ultimately an increase in sales.
Helps identify areas of improvement
Mistakes in your business are a great way to identify areas for self improvement. While market search can be a good indicator on how your customers will receive your product or service, nothing will beat experience. It’s experience that will help you identify areas where you can better serve your customers needs or improve their user experience. Identifying these mistakes can also help outline new areas your business may not have considered.
This is a good reason as to why your business should welcome any mistakes it comes across and view these as valuable feedback rather than something that is a nuisance that needs to be fixed.
Give direct feedback
Your customers can be a great source of learning. While you may notice mistakes made in your business, your greatest source of learning is actually your customers. They are the first ones to let you know what is working and what isn’t.
One of the main reasons for this is because they interact with your business on a regular basis and have gone through the whole process from prospect to purchase. That is why it’s important for your business to monitor any mentions and conversations from customers for feedback. This will help to increase your knowledge as a business, as it allows you to get valuable data on how your customers are using and interacting with your product, service or site. It’s also important to note that not all customer feedback is external. A good tip is to keep track of feedback to create a system where feedback can be monitored and discussed.
Helps to meet customer expectations
Acting on customer feedback helps to create a product or service in line with customer expectations. Listening to customer feedback with regards to what can be improved, or any mistakes made, is only half the equation. To truly build trust with customers, you want to ensure you actually take action and implement the suggestions or feedback they have given you.
You will want to ensure you review your feedback on a regular basis, as this will help ensure your business is always creating demand in line with your customer’s expectations– be it your website’s design, sales process or even product or service features.
It makes you innovate
Customer feed back is very powerful. It can cause you to think out of the box and see what your customer are wanting and their expectations. From listening to the customer your business can develop a unique identity and product that your customers enjoy and you know that it is for them.
Look at your feed back regularly, remember who your customers are and make your product to what they want.
