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Building customer trust in your on-line business

By Jeff Bressler for CEOWORLD Magazine Updated:July 16, 2009

The internet world of commerce can be very impersonal indeed. It is a daunting task to get consumers to have a “personal” experience when shopping on your site. There are ways though to make customers feel like they are part of your family and have trust in your business

Nowhere is trust truer than on the internet, where you will probably never meet any of your customers in person. Establishing a trusted relationship with your potential online clients takes time, but it is well worth the effort to create and enhance sales.

If you recall the last time you bought a product or service online chances are, no matter the price of the item, you did some research first, perhaps reading online forums and reviews to see what others had to say about them or contacting the site directly with questions and observing how quick and helpful their response was.

Your potential online clients are no different. They are going to want to know if they can also trust you to deliver quality.

I recently attended a customer service seminar for not for profit organizations that solicited donations or sold products on-line. I’ve adjusted some of the key points from the session to speak to for profit readers. Here are three specific ways you can work on building trust relationships online, and how each will help your business:

Get to know your customers. This helps you more deeply understand what it is they need — making it a lot easier to tell them how what you are selling is going to meet their needs. Find out where they “hang” out. Participate as a valued expert on forums, social networking sites and print media that is relevant to the product you sell. You will add trust and value to your product if purchasers trust your expertise.

Connect with your customer on a personal level. Let them see you as a person, one who has some things in common with them. People will trust you, and ultimately buy from you, if they feel you are like them. Place a blog on your website with a picture of yourself. Give consumers good product insight on your blog and respond to their questions and comments.

Keep up the trust relationship. The relationship doesn’t stop after the sale. Customers who know and like you, and have benefited from what you have sold them, will tell others about your business. It will be easy for them to recommend you because they are recommending a trusted vendor, not an impersonal business or product. If you’ve done a good job of providing them with something that makes their job or life easier, they won’t hesitate to talk about you in glowing terms.

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Tagged with: Building customer, Building customer trust, on-line business

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Interesting!

Doing business is not a rocket science, but maintaining business profitability is an important factor in any business. I will maintain my business profitability with online business and search engine optimization a supplement to it.