How to earn customer trust: The steps from search to sale

In many ways, 2020 catapulted brands into the 21^st century, forcing businesses to reflect on each aspect of their organization, from supply chain struggles to learning how to earn customer trust, no questions were off the table.

Companies that never thought they’d need a digital strategy were forced to pivot quickly and adapt to the changing environment that the pandemic brought forth, as well as the somewhat erratic change in consumer behavior.

Brands were forced to rethink their models of engagement and how they interact with their customers to ensure they maintain (or earn) their customers’ trust.

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How to earn customer trust, despite a wary world

Some questions brought forth from the trials of 2020:

1. How to conduct business online when your target customer base and the basis of your industry never prioritized online engagements?
2. How do you ensure a consistent and safe experience that’s comparable to a physical storefront and face to face interactions?
3. How do you make the experience better across both worlds, physical and digital, and every interaction in between?

We see the role of e-commerce for brands expanding – from search to sale – trust must be at the heart of each engagement.

Companies are adopting new channels to ensure that e-commerce is available everywhere the customer is interacting, giving customers more freedom to choose.

Many companies invested in creating experiences that were tailored and personalized in order to only give their customers relevant recommendations to meet their needs – and a strong customer data strategy is key to earning that trust.

Customers are more willing to jump ship on brands and pivot to companies that have the agility to meet their changing (and somewhat erratic) preferences day to day.

Customer data management strategy: 7 keys to growth, CX, loyalty

Brands need to adopt these 7 key principles around customer data management to help define their overall data strategy and goals.

Not so fast: Customers aren’t willing to hand over data just because brands ask

The days of consumers happily handing over an email or phone number just because it’s requested are over. Today consumers are much smarter about how their data is used, and actively work to protect that information, however, they will share their information, for a couple of reasons:

1. They see value in what they’re getting in return
2. They trust that you’re going to protect their data

Instead of working to fight new privacy regulations and laws, rather providing transparency and using consent-driven data management earns customer trust and loyalty.

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Customer identity and access management software: A single cloud platform to earn trust + drive growth

Customer identity and access management (CIAM) software can do wonders for your business, including:

1. Capture and manage customer identities to remove friction at registration and log-in
2. Build robust customer profiles based on first-party, permission-based data
3. Orchestrate and govern customer profiles in near real-time to other customer engagement solutions to deliver personalized experiences

These capabilities have become more critical in the wake of the global pandemic, which has forced brands to go digital in a hurry.

As we move forward, brands need to invest in building customer trust across e-commerce.

They need to consider how to make every experience better for their customers in both the digital and physical world, and every channel and point of interaction in between.