Despite Britons spending about £43.8bn online last year, the Office of Fair Trading has revealed that almost one in three internet users is still reluctant to shop online. For 30% of internet refuseniks, their reluctance is down to a lack of trust. This shows that consumers want reassurance that your site offers good products and services in a safe environment and the best way of achieving this is though the testing of people who have bought from you in the past.
With the banking crisis and MP expenses scandal, the public is rapidly losing trust and demanding more and more information from corporations and public bodies. What’s true for the government should be true for any commercial supplier, whether it is a retailer or a professional. ASDA’s CEO Andy Bond recently compared the scale of change in the relationship between shoppers and retailers to that which unions brought to relations between employers and employees. Customers are demanding a voice and expect transparency and honesty in their dealings with retailers. For start-ups and smaller brands in particular, a lack of faith from customers can be a tricky obstacle to overcome.
The web can be both intimidating and overwhelming for customers. Whilst its sheer size offers a great opportunity for business ventures big and small, it is crowded with thousands of etailers, each shouting about their fantastic products and services to grab the attention of roaming shoppers. Not many internet businesses have a high street presence or a big brand name like Amazon that is well known. How does the company compete and gain trust in this online jungle to become the leader of the pack? Well, the answer lies in clearly independent recommendations from others who have used your service.
Reputation is everything
Few would contest that the success or failure of a business is highly dependent on its reputation and the satisfaction levels of its customers. As revealed in a recent study by the Interactive Media Retail Group, website features that are likely to keep customers satisfied involve provision of advice and reassurance about purchases, including recommendations and customer reviews. However, many companies only feel the need to highlight the positive feedback received, or indeed to make vague statements such as “our customer feedback is positive”. But there is a world of difference between heavily edited and potentially biased feedback that is made public and is a true eBay-style feedback system.
eBay simply couldn’t work if it were not for the feedback system. How else do you know that you can trust a seller who lives at the other end of the country, or even the other end of the earth? To some, displaying direct customer feedback publicly on their web site threatens their control over their reputation. However, the internet has provided us with an unparalleled opportunity to be open and transparent in our dealings. Displaying the good and the bad can be a great opportunity to address the operational problems within the business. You can see where things are going well and also what needs improving. And when you make those improvements, you can feed that back to your customers in public responses to their own complaints.
By directly addressing any negative feedback in a public manner, the business is able to show that it cares about its customers and will build greater trust. All too often, etailers will ask their customers: "What did you think of this product?" in order to gather customer feedback. By asking this question, etailers are avoiding the much more important question: "What did you think about us?" An open-ended question such as this is certainly a better way of finding out what’s on customers’ minds and more effective than distributing a questionnaire concentrating on areas that are assumed to be important to customers.
Online feedback is also a good way to boost employee morale, with every member of the business able to see that customers respond to good service.
Learn from bricks and mortar
The lack of face-to-face contact available to online retailers compared to brick and mortar outlets means that businesses are in danger of sliding further and further away from their customers. The old fashioned values that operated in the corner shop are a good template for etailers to follow. In the shop, the man behind the counter talked to his customers and, by doing so, made them enjoy buying from him. He also learnt what his customers wanted, which made him a better supplier as well as a more profitable supplier.
With customers quickly losing faith in corporations it’s imperative that businesses develop clear and open lines of communications to build greater trust. Those that are in fear of losing control are fighting a losing battle. The very nature of the internet means that any comment about you from your customer will reach a massive audience in just one click.
Anyone operating a good, clean business will benefit from a public feedback system which asks every customer to comment and allows the supplier the right of reply. To be in control is to know what your customers are thinking - and to be in a position to do something about it.
