How a Transparent Team Culture Can Improve Customer Service It's no longer enough to rely on imagery and messaging if you want to be taken seriously by your audience.
Edited by Dan Bova
It can be tough to pinpoint the exact reason a customer decides to do business with your company, but more often than not, it is the moment the consumer chooses to trust your brand. With this in mind, it makes sense for companies in any industry to prioritize transparency and truthfulness as critical components of customer service. If a company masters this, its customers are less likely to feel the sensation of buyer's remorse. Plus, it helps build long-term relationships that result in repeat business and increased revenues. So how can you master it?
Here are a few pointers to get you started:
Transparency begins with your team.
Your company culture will reflect on the way your employees do business with customers. That's why it's imperative to support trust and transparency among your internal team. You know how the old saying goes: "You have to walk the walk to talk the talk."
Related: For Your Business to Bloom, Cultivate the Right Company Culture
To establish and protect a sense of trust among employees, make it part of your daily working routines to share knowledge and learnings across the company. As this culture is nurtured and your business grows, it will help employees cooperate and allow such values to inform their interactions with vendors, prospective employees and perhaps most importantly, customers.
Great customer service is the heart of an exceptional business.
Consumers may tune-out ads, but they love a brand to which they can return. Usually, the reason behind this loyalty is the brand's ability to exceed expectations and deliver attentive, holistic customer service, often with elements of personalization that reminds the consumer he's an individual, not a profit margin. This effort begins when a brand remembers specific customer preferences and information, such as birthdays.
Related: The Key to Rapid Scale? Authentic Core Values.
For example, the Trustpilot customer success team recognizes one customer per month with a "High Flyers Award" when the reviews from their own customers hit milestone numbers or reflect exceptional rates of customer satisfaction.
Gather customer insights from a direct source.
Maintaining a focus on customer feedback is a major driver of success for companies of all sizes and industries -- from B2B tech startups to budding entrepreneurs. Business leaders need only to go straight to the source -- direct customer feedback -- to collect the information they need. The best steps you can take are ones that show customers that you listened and acted on their suggestions. As a result, you can meet the needs of your projected audience, even when you're facing competitors that provide a similar service or expanding into a new market and culture that may be unfamiliar to your team.
For instance, Bookbyte, aTrustpilot partner providing used textbooks online, found itself in a hyper-competitive vertical after 10 years in business. By implementing a review collection solution, they were able to signal to the market that they truly care about their customer's feedback.
As marketing and business evolve, brands need to get smarter. It's no longer enough to rely on imagery and messaging if you want to be taken seriously by your audience. That's why smart marketers take cues from their customers – and why brands that heed customer advice expand on a global scale.
Related: Putting People Over Profit in Business and Life
