You might have created the best products according to the needs of your customers. But do your customers see it in the same way as you do?
Perhaps, the hardest thing for a brand is to control or even enhance the customer perception towards their products and services.
Fortunately, you can always carry out a comparative study to understand where your brand is lagging. In other words, it means you are not required to be perfect; you just need to do better than your competition.
Let’s broadly understand its meaning before proceeding with our magic tricks to enhance your customer perception.
What exactly is customer perception?
Customer perception is the way the customer feels about a business. It’s a specific opinion they’ve formed after a few interactions with a company. Essentially, it all boils down to one thing: trust. A good product with lousy support is the same as an awful product with good support in terms of customer retention.
With an increased number of companies competing in the market, business competition has become very stiff. As a result, even the most prominent companies today don’t want to take any chances for their reputation. That means they want to make sure their customers are pleased with what they do to keep them happy for business-building purposes in the long run. But to achieve this, businesses must learn how to manage customer perception successfully.
What makes customer perception important for your brand?
Even if you have an excellent product, poor customer service can seriously impact its appeal and how likely a customer is to return, which can have a material impact on your business. It’s therefore essential to get this aspect right from the get-go. But, this isn’t always possible, mainly if your brand appears to be relatively new.
Customers want to feel good about a brand and a company. Therefore, they want to associate with consumer-oriented corporations featuring positive world views.
As you grow and expand, it’s more and more critical that customers can trust you and your company. That trust extends past the quality of your products and the services you provide: It also includes how those services are delivered. And as the world innovates faster than ever before, customer perceptions become even more critical.
8 Effective ways to enhance your customer perception
Now that you know the importance of customer perception for your business, let’s dive deep into the eight most effective ways to enhance it:
1. Try and understand how your customers perceive your brand
a. Send surveys
Surveys aren’t just an optional add-on. Instead, they’re an essential tool for gathering feedback and tracking customer satisfaction. With these tools, you can tailor surveys to your customers’ personal preferences, then distribute them via email, your website, or social media. You can even ask customers to review your product or to share their thoughts on your service.
b. Read online reviews
Your reputation could be built up by positive reviews, but it’s more likely, by far, to be shaped by the negative ones.
It’s tempting to ignore negative reviews but ignoring them can have surprisingly big consequences.
Ignoring negative feedback can undermine your customers’ trust in your business, which can significantly impact the bottom line.
Keep track of all that’s said about your product and take it as constructive feedback to improve your product.
Social media is not only a fantastic way to communicate. It’s a way to influence your brand perception and drive sales.
Your customers want to hear from you, and they want to know who you are.
But social media isn’t a one-way street. You need to listen and respond to what your customers are saying about you, and you also need to talk to them genuinely.
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2. Try and maintain a positive connection with your customers
a. Provide personalized and quick customer service
In the digital era, consumers expect companies to know who they are and what their preferences are. While “personalization” has become a buzzword, it’s a simple concept: companies should recognize customers by name and provide relevant, targeted, and timely customer service.
Besides, consumers expect companies to respond quickly to needs, questions, and problems. So if it takes more than a day or so to respond, customers may get annoyed and suspicious.
b. Emotionally connect with your customers
The emotional connection to a product is what turns a mundane purchase into a memorable one.
It’s not enough to convey emotion in your marketing copy or on your website; you need to create it, then reinforce it throughout every touchpoint, from your website to your email to your direct mail and brochures.
The best way to develop a strong relationship with your customer is to engage with them through social media. The very nature of social media encourages interaction, and that interaction can help build a loyal customer base.
Social media also allows you to build relationships with customers.
While it’s possible to use social media solely as a customer service tool, it’s most successful when used as an opportunity to engage with your customers. Social media is a two-way street, and social media interactions are powerful.
3. Always look to improve your services by being open to negative feedback
Everyone wants positive feedback. But let’s face it — sometimes, the best thing you can do to improve your business is to learn from the negative ones. After all, if a customer complaint, they’re telling you something has gone very, very wrong.
While you don’t want to ignore all bad reviews, look for trends in how people are complaining. If you were ignoring negative reviews, you might miss something fixable.
By addressing specific problems, you can show new customers that you’re listening and making improvements to your business.
4. Take advantage of user-generated content to your advantage
You’ve probably read about the importance of marketing on social media channels. But one of the most valuable things you can do to make your brand stand out is to optimize its user experience.
User-generated content (UGC), such as product reviews, is one of the most potent ways to enhance this user experience.
Your customers love sharing their opinions. They’re also more likely to trust the opinions of other people — especially when they’re other potential customers.
5. Always share authentic customer testimonials
When a customer lands on your website or opens your newsletter, a persuasive testimonial can convince them to make that purchase. According to a study, customers read testimonials when considering a purchase. For many consumers, it’s the human element that matters most in a product, whether they’re buying a guitar or a high-tech gizmo.
Even if your company has impeccable customer service, testimonials from happy customers make all the difference.
Testimonials work because they show customers that other people found your company worthy of their investment. They don’t have to be dramatic — a few kind words from a happy customer can go a long way.
6. Never make a false promise
It’s essential to create the best possible impression so that your customers will continue to do business with you, and it’s never a good idea to make false claims or promises to your customers.
When customers make a purchase, they’re investing, and the last thing you want them to do is wasting their money by buying something that doesn’t work or isn’t what they expected. Instead of making empty promises, you need to provide all possible solutions that go beyond your product.
7. Respond quickly and with compassion to customers’ queries
To develop a positive perception in the mind of your customers, you need to assist your customers in every possible way. Therefore, it’s of prime importance that you quickly respond to your customers’ queries politely with courtesy.
Apart from responding to your customers’ queries, giving your customers appropriate advice and help is also necessary. For instance, if your customers are not satisfied with the quality of a product or any product-related issues, you should not ignore their queries. You should not hesitate to communicate with your buyers and provide them with sufficient information.
8. Never get complacent
It’s easy to get comfortable when everything seems to be going smoothly. But, complacency in customer service may show your customers that you no longer value your business – enough reason to walk straight to a competitor.
Customers and prospects are fickle, and a wrong impression of your company, your products, or your services can happen very quickly. To improve customer perception, you need to constantly look for ways to progress and push yourself to keep measuring your customers’ satisfaction.
Final Thoughts
One of the most innovative ways to cultivate a positive customer perception in the minds of your customers is by differentiating your products from the competitors.
Since your customers see lots of advertisements daily, it becomes challenging to reach them. But it does not take a larger budget or viral marketing campaigns to get your ideal customer.
Sometimes all you need is to be aware of what is your unique selling proposition. Customer perception is all about reaching their hearts and contributing positively.
You need to make the customers feel special and create an atmosphere in your organization to foster positive customer perception from the very beginning of your customer journey. This is the least you can do to fix the negative perception.
You might also like:
- The Ultimate Guide to Customer Conversations – Conversations are the backbone of any relationship. Here’s the ultimate guide and few tips on increasing the quality of customer conversations.
- To understand how SmartKarrot can helps SaaS companies keep and grow loyal customers, Request a Demo.
Rakhin has over 10 years of experience driving business development and client services. In his prior roles, he stayed close to customers to understand their requirements and help them achieve their business goals. He is passionate about customer success.
Published October 18, 2021, Updated October 18, 2021
