The Three Outcomes that Drive Customer Happiness [Study]

Forget ‘customer satisfaction’, what matters is ‘life satisfaction’.

Here’s a great study in the latest edition of the wonderfully titled academic ‘Journal of Happiness & Well-Being‘ that can help you understand and deliver customer happiness.
The key takeout for marketers is customer happiness is not about satisfaction with a product or brand, it’s about how we help enhance the life satisfaction of our customers.

The study investigated the idea of human happiness and summarised recent psychology of that shows that to achieve high levels of ‘Subjective Well Being’ (SWB) – as happiness is known in psychology, we need to experience three things

1. Frequent positive affect
2. Low levels of negative affect
3. High satisfaction with life

We need all three to be happy. Interestingly, the study found that people seem to be intuitively aware that these are the three factors that drive overall happiness.

Why is this relevant for marketers?  Simply put, we may over focus on immediate ‘affect’ – people’s emotional response to our ads or products – (removing negative affect, adding positive affect – or in plain English are we are creating smiles or relieving pains). This is good, but not sufficient, and it is very brand-centric.  Instead, we need to take a human-first perspective, and understand how what we do fits into people’s lives and influences their perceptions of life satisfaction.

Good marketing and good products enhance life satisfaction.
Tall order, but at least by asking the right questions, we’ll be on the right path

1. Are we increasingly positive affect?
2. Are we reducing negative affect?
3. Are we increasing satisfaction with life?

The measure of good marketing is not ‘brand satisfaction’ or ‘customer satisfaction’, it’s ‘life satisfaction’.












http://digitalintelligencetoday.com/the-three-outcomes-that-drive-customer-happiness-study/

5 Surprising Studies on What People Consider "Good" Customer Service

In theory, the “tricks” to delivering awesome customer service are pretty straightforward:

• Empathy
• Appreciation
• Helpfulness

Seems pretty easy, right? Just develop these three skills, and you'll be set. Sure, you can tune these by mastering the “thank you,” or by understanding how things like tone and word choice make a difference in support.

But in practice, delighting customers isn't so straightforward -- what actually works doesn’t always reflect what most of us would assume.
There are quite a few counterintuitive truths that can make or break how your customers feel about your service. Below are five surprising data points on what people really expect out of "good" customer service.

1) Should you start with the good news, or the bad news? It depends.

How many times has someone asked you whether you want them to start with the good news or the bad news?
It’s an old cliche, but it turns out that it actually does make a difference. And the order you choose can actually change the way your customers feel and act.

Researchers at UC-Riverside tested the order in which they delivered news to subjects, and gauged their responses and behavior.

What they found was interesting: People who were given the bad news first were more likely to feel better about what they were told, while people who were given the bad news last were more motivated to act on the news.



In customer service, we generally want our customers to be happier, so it’s a good idea to lead with the bad news. But if you need to persuade the customer to act, then start with the good.

2) There are things more important than speed in great customer service ...

Conventional wisdom would suggest that the faster a customer gets help, the happier they’ll be. And in general, that’s true.

However, there are other, often-overlooked elements that are even more important than speed.
One survey by Gallup measured how engaged customers felt after getting service at a bank.
While customers who felt that the bank offered speedy service were six times more likely to be highly engaged, customers who gave the bank high ratings on “people” factors (like the tellers’ courtesy and willingness to help) were nine times more likely to be fully engaged.



As William J. McEwen puts it in Married to the Brand, “Speed is one factor, but it is markedly less important than having tellers who can deliver services in a friendly and competent manner.”
Rather than a laser focus on speed, try emphasizing thorough, attentive, and friendly customer service.

3) ... Except on social media, where speed matters most.

Customer expectations -- the expectations that customer happiness hinges on -- change based on the medium you’re interacting in.
While speed may not be most important for email, phone, or in-person support, in social media, speed trumps all.

In a survey by The Social Habit, 32% of social media users who contact a brand expect a response within 30 minutes, and 42% expect a response within 60 minutes.



And customers don’t like to wait just because it’s a night or weekend. 57% of customers expect the same response time at night and on weekends as during normal business hours.
It might not be fair, but it’s a fact: Customers expect speedy service on social media.

4) Want loyal customers? Go beyond "delight."

There’s a lot of talk about ways to delight your customers. It's a great habit to get into, and it can be a great way to grow your business.
But delighting your customers doesn't mean you should just be extra nice to them. There's another powerful way you can develop loyal customers: reduce their effort.

In a 2007 survey by the Customer Contact Council, more than 75,000 customers were surveyed about their phone, chat, and email interactions with customer service representatives. The study found that the single most important factor in increasing customer loyalty is reducing the amount of work the customer has to do to get their problem solved.



How can you apply this?
Simple: If the customer needs to do something to resolve their issue, do it for them.
Does your customer need to follow a link and fill out a form to make updates to their account? Make the updates for them.

Do they need to take steps to troubleshoot an issue they’re having? Set up a screen share on Skype or Google Hangouts and walk them through it.
Customers are often asked to do a lot of work to solve their problems:

• Call another number
• Send in a letter
• Fill out a form

By taking the work off of your customers’ plates, you can both reduce their effort and delight them, as they’ll be more than a little bit surprised by your (unfortunately) unusual approach.

5) What’s the biggest reason people stop doing business with a company?

The answer might surprise you.
Here’s a hint: it’s NOT ...

• Price
• Product shortcomings
• Advertising from competitors

Yes, those can all leach customers from you. But, according to the 2010 Customer Experience Report by RightNow, the biggest reason people stop doing business with a company is due to a poor customer service experience.

In fact, 82% of people have left a company because of a bad customer service experience.
On the other hand, creating good customer experiences and happy customers delivers a big -- and predictable -- return on investment: Happy customers, on average, tell nine people about their experiences.



Happy customers also reduce your costs, and the probability of selling to an existing happy customer is up to 14x higher than the probability of selling to a new customer.



So while bad customer service can crush you, delivering excellent customer service can help build loyal customer relationships, reduce churn, increase retention and referrals, and quickly grow your business.










http://blog.hubspot.com/sales/what-people-consider-good-customer-service-data

How to Handle 8 Challenging Customer Service Scenarios

In the world of customer service, many would argue that pure “scripts” are the antithesis of great service.

That is to say, customer service should be a conversation rather than a cold, lifeless script.
However, given the variable nature of interacting with customers, it’s easy to see how support champs can certainly benefit from some forward thinking in dealing with tough scenarios.

This is where flexible responses—in lieu of pure scripts—can be quite useful. They allow reps to have some idea of what to say to customers in a tough situation, but also give them the flexibility to adapt and add their own personality.

We know that great service benefits from having good systems, so below I’ll outline some of my favorite "field-tested" responses to tough customer questions that you can use and adjust when you’re providing support.

1. When You Don’t Know

You shouldn’t beat yourself up for not knowing an answer. After all, a support rep’s responsibility is to have the tenacity to make things right, not to be perfect (especially true if you’re new).
The mistake many support reps make, however, is in using the knee-jerk “I don’t know” response, which doesn’t help the customer. The customer may be sympathetic that you don’t know, but they’re not interested in hearing about it.
Instead, try the following:

"Does the ‘Premium’ package come with ______? Great question, let me find that out for you right now!”

Placing the emphasis on the customer’s needs over your own situation (“I don’t know, I’m new here…”) lets them know that it doesn’t matter that you don’t know the answer, because you’re going to do whatever you need to in order to find out for them.


2. When an Item Isn’t Available

No eCommerce store owner or support champion likes to tell a customer that an item isn’t currently available, but there is a much better way to go about it.

One of the most important skills in interacting with customers is the use of positive language.
Here's an example: let's say a customer contacts you with interest in a particular product, but that product happens to be backordered until next month.

• Without positive language: I can't get you that product until next month; it is back-ordered and unavailable at this time."
• With positive language: "That product will actually be available next month. I can place the order for you right now and make sure that it is sent to you as soon as it reaches our warehouse!"

Positive languages eschews negative phrases (“I can’t…”) and instead places emphasis on the solution, which is what the customer actually cares about.

Try finding places in your response where a lot of negative language is present (“We don’t do that”) and see where positive language can be substituted.

3. When Transferring a Customer

There isn’t a single consumer out there who likes hearing, “Please hold while we transfer you. Your call is very important to us.”

The problem is, sometimes you do need to transfer customers in order to better help them. The problem is that many businesses don’t seek to help customers understand why they are being transferred.


Here’s a typical unappealing response some reps use to transfer people:

"Sir/ma’am, my apologies, but I’m going to have to transfer your call to Department XYZ.”

Annoying! As a customer, my gut reaction is to think that the wheel of misfortune has begun, and that I’m going to get passed around and treated like another hassle.
Imagine using this language instead:

"Hello Mr./Mrs. _____! Let’s get this problem resolved for you. I’m going to transfer you to our _____ specialist who is the best-suited person to answer your question.”

Hearing that I’m being sent to the resident expert and knowing that the rep who is sending me has my problem in mind is much more reassuring than the vague “Sorry, you’re getting transferred,” response that most companies use.

Few customers will jump for joy because of a transferred call (no matter how you handle it), but it’s better to assure them that the action was taken in their favor, in order to solve their current problem.

4. Feature Requests That Won’t Work

Customers can often have some valuable insights on how your product is used and how it could be improved, but your product’s vision is your responsibility, thus the final call is left to you.
If it is very obvious that a feature request a customer has sent in won’t make the cut, you have to be able to tell them so. Saying, “We’ll take a look!” gives false hope that can end up with a customer checking in weeks later, only to be disappointed again.

The truth is, you don’t need to be worried about a mass exodus of customers just because you regularly say “no” to many product features.
As someone who regularly answers feedback requests for Help Scout, here is the language that I often use to tell customers a feature just isn’t the right fit:

"Hey ______, I really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with us. As of this time however, [Feature X] isn’t the perfect fit, and we have no immediate plans to implement it. We do have some other exciting features on our plate, and should anything change about your request, we’ll make sure you are the first to know."

If you’re using a simple feedback system like Trello to keep track of past requests, adding an email is easy, so if your stance on a certain feature does change in the future, it becomes a simple process to notify customers via email.


5. Favors that Cannot Be Done


"Can’t you bend the rules just this once?!”


To be frank, most requests from customers are very reasonable, and every effort should be made to make them happy.
Bob Farrell describes this as “giving them the pickle,” a phrase which refers to a letter he received from an unhappy customer who wasn’t able to get an extra pickle for his hamburger.

We call these “frugal wows,” but the idea is the same—a small request fulfilled can often leave a very positive impact on a customer, which is why it's almost always worth it to just 'give them the pickle.'


But what about requests that you truly cannot say 'Yes' to? I can give you a very candid story of when this really mattered to me: I was checking in to a very tiny beach hotel with a few of my friends, one of whom had a severe allergy to cats. I vividly remember watching this older couple at the desk while we were checking in, pleading with the employee to let their cat stay (the policy was “No Pets”).
"Please let Mr. Sprinkles stay!”

(I don’t actually remember what they said, but you get the idea.)
If the front desk employee had given way to their request, he would have (unknowingly) made our group upset, trading one potentially unhappy customer for an even bigger problem.
I remember being really impressed with how he handled the situation, and I’ll paraphrase his response below:

"Mr. and Mrs. ______, as much as I like fulfilling our customers’ requests, I’m afraid that the “No Pets” policy we have in place is too important, as it deals with the safety and comfort of other customers. Can I perhaps call around for locations where your cat might be able to stay?"

A stellar response to a pretty wacky request (c’mon, most people should know you can’t bring a pet to a hotel). It can be tough learning how to say no, but bending too much for a single request can result in an even worse situation.

Remember that a customer's perception of your service quality is greatly affected by how attentive, thoughtful and sincere you are. In an awkward scenario where you simply have to refuse a request, showcasing your empathy and a willingness to find an alternative is one of the best ways to lessen the sting of saying 'No'.

6. A Product is Defective

Having a purchase come up short is very disheartening from the customer's perspective. I'm sure we've all ran into this scenario: after finally convincing ourselves to pull the trigger on a purchase, we wait with excitement until it’s delivered…only to have it arrive broken.

We all internally recognize that even great companies can’t build and ship everything perfectly, but it’s just so frustrating to be the person on the receiving end of a dud.


Showing empathy to the customer’s situation thus becomes very important, following with an immediate explanation of how you’re going to fix the situation. Consider the following example:

"I’m so sorry about that, that’s very disappointing! There might have been a slight mistake in the manufacturing process, or perhaps it was damaged while being shipped. Can I send a new one out to you right away?”

While long, it completes three important objectives: it empathizes with the customer’s frustrating experience, it explains what the problem might be (instead of having a customer assume, “we make crap products”), and it offers a clear and immediate solution.

Depending on what you sell and how you conduct business, you might also add, “or should I send you a full refund?” Either way, know that in this situation it’s the ability to relate with a customer that counts.

7. Closing with a Customer

One of my favorite tips in dealing with customers is to make sure that you always “close” a conversation. This has nothing to do with closing a sale, and everything to do with making sure the conversation with a customer is complete.

This is important because as you’ll recall, the average business only hears from 4% of its dissatisfied customers. You needn’t add to that harrowing statistic by leaving people you’ve helped with an unsolved dilemma.

Your willingness to ensure that a customer is leaving perfectly happy shows them three important things:

1. You care about getting it right.
2. You're willing to keep going until you get it right.
3. The customer is the one who determines what “right” is.

Try ending your conversation with a phrase like the following:

"Excellent! I’m glad we were able to get that sorted out for you. Before you go, was there anything else I could assist you with today? I’m happy to help.”

Believe it or not, there are some people who might walk away with another problem if they aren’t asked about it. Adding, “I’m happy to help” is a very small gesture you can make that has a big impact: it shows the customer that asking for another favor isn’t being a burden; in fact, you’d be happy to do it.


8. Severely Angry Customers

Support champions are often required to act like lightning rods: to take the brunt of an emotional, angry customer despite the fact that it is not their fault.


Sometimes this anger from customers is unjustified, and other times they have a cause for their actions. Either way, it’s often quite hard to win back a severely angry customer (even the best businesses can’t make everyone happy), but the smart folks at Telephone Doctor have a great system called “ASAP” for dealing with these most difficult of customers:

• Apologize sincerely: “I’m sorry” is a mandatory response in these situations, even if it isn’t your fault. Consider your “I’m truly sorry about that” as a personal apology to the customer that the experience wasn’t up to their expectations, not that you are to blame.
• Sympathize: As you might have guessed, many times angry customers are just as interested (if not more interested) in hearing that someone empathizes with their situation over getting the actual problem fixed. Even if you cannot understand a customer (“Why are they so angry?”), you can imagine how you’d like to be treated if you happened to be that upset. Even small phrases like, “I understand how upsetting that must have been,” can have an impact on getting the customer to realize that you’re on their team in this pursuit to make things right.
• Accept responsibility: As the ambassador of your company, you accept responsibility for the customer’s unhappiness. Again, this doesn’t make you “at fault,” and it doesn’t give the customer leeway to demand whatever they want, but it does give them someone to talk to instead of being angry at a faceless company (i.e., “I’m very sorry that our product has been so disappointing thus far, Mrs. _____, but if you stay on the line I’ll make sure that we get this situation fixed for you.”).
• Prepare to help: With angry customers, the actual 'fix' tends to take up a small portion of the entire support process. Placing a replacement order likely takes you very little time, but that fix doesn’t address the underlying problem of the customer’s frustration and unhappiness. These 'emotional' fixes are often the most important element: refunding someone may take you 15 seconds, but did you make sure enough time was spent trying to help them calm down and leave happy?

It’s hard to come up with a perfect solution for a customer in this state, and know that even if you handle things perfectly, some people simply cannot be appeased. Don’t let that stop you from making your best effort.




https://www.helpscout.net/blog/customer-service-scenarios/

20 Tools for Customer Feedback, Surveys

Feedback tools can help you find out what is, and what is not, working with your website. Better yet, they can help you get fresh insights from your most important resource – your customers.

Here is a list of 20 customer feedback tools. There are survey and polling tools, customer support platforms with feedback forums, live chat solutions, and user testing tools for consumers to voice their opinions.

20 Tools for Customer Feedback, Surveys

SurveyGizmo. SurveyGizmo enables you to build surveys with 30 question styles with advanced features like sliders and drop-downs. SurveyGizmo features pre-made themes, reporting tools, style editor, branding, and distribution features like mobile-optimized and offline surveys. Price: Free version offers eight question types. Paid plans start at $15 per month.

SurveyGizmo

SurveyMonkey. SurveyMonkey is a customer survey tool with 15 different question types. Customize the look and feel of your surveys. Create a survey URL and send respondents to a promotional landing page upon survey completion. Gain insights with real-time charts and graphs, filters, and cross tabs. Download results with a variety of export options. Price: Free plan offers 10 questions and 100 responses. Paid plans start at $26 per month.

Polldaddy. Polldaddy lets you create surveys and polls that match your brand, budget and vision. Choose from 14 question types, including multiple choice, free text, and Likert scales. Use the iOS app to collect responses anywhere. Watch your results in real-time. Price: Personal version is free. Paid plans start at $200 per year.

GetFeedback. GetFeedback is an online survey tool that allows anyone to create branded, mobile-ready surveys in minutes. GetFeedback automatically formats your survey for smartphones, tablets, and browsers. View the data in real-time. Price: Free up to 10 responses per month. Paid plans start at $20 per month.

Feedbackify. Feedbackify is a website widget to receive feedback from your website visitors. Create a custom feedback form, using the drag-and-drop editor. Copy the short code into your website’s HTML to start receiving feedback. View feedback in real-time. Filter your feedback by category and subcategory. Price: $19 per month.

Feedbackify

UserVoice. UserVoice provides multiple tools to keep your customers happy: feedback forums, support ticket systems, and a knowledge base. Use SmartVote and satisfaction surveys to solicit feedback. With the helpdesk, users can reach you without going to a customer portal or opening an email composer. UserVoice also suggests knowledge base articles or feedback from other users to answer questions. Price: Plans range from free to $95 per month.

Usabilla. Usabilla seeks to make it easy for your website visitors to get in touch and share their feedback. Your customers can simply select the part of your website they want to give feedback on. Run different feedback forms on your website with targeted feedback forms. Ask your visitors different questions within your funnel. Usabilla features targeted messages, slide-out survey and full (exit) survey campaigns. Price: Plans start at $49 per month.

IdeaScale. IdeaScale is a solution for the collection of feedback and ideas. Users submit ideas, while others vote. Watch a community form as people start discussing and voting for ideas. The widget can be added to any online experience. Members can submit ideas, vote, comment and complete other tasks, without leaving the original digital environment. Price: Free plan offers 5 campaigns. Paid plans start at $2,500 per year.

UserEcho. UserEcho is a customer support solution that offers a forum, knowledge base, help desk and live chat. In the forum, users can vote for proposed ideas, so you get the information that your customers need most now. Widget enables feedback collection and live chat. Chat tab will appear only if there’s at least one support agent available online. Chat history is saved in the searchable archive. Price: $15 per month for each agent.

UserEcho

FormSite. FormSite is a tool to build forms and web surveys. Choose from over 100 pre-built form templates to customize for customer surveys. Use the drag-and-drop editor with over 40 question types to design a form or survey. Price: Free for five forms per month. Paid plans start at $14.95 per month.

UseResponse. UseResponse is a self-hosted, open-source tool for customer feedback and support. Create votes for your products, ask for customer opinions, or just find out if your customers are satisfied. Best ideas quickly gain popularity as users vote. FormSite also features ticketing helpdesk, knowledge base, live chat, and analytics. Price: Free or $499 fee.

Twtpoll. Twtpoll is a tool for your social survey needs. Twtpoll offers a host of survey combinations, such as a hashtag survey, one-question or multi-question survey, or a quiz. Choose from more that 20 combinations of questions for your surveys. Price: $7 per question or $19 per month.

Qualaroo. Qualaroo is an onsite survey tool that lets you ask website visitors questions in real-time right from the page they’re on. Qualaroo exit surveys let you trigger an on-page survey to find out why they’re not quite ready to buy. With the Qualaroo Convert add-on, you can recapture potential abandoners with special offers and customer support. Price: Plans start at $63 per month.

Qualaroo

Feedback Lite. Feedback Lite is a customer feedback and survey tool. Feedback Lite offers five feedback templates, with multiple choice, an open-ended answer, a rating scale, a Likert scale, and a ranking scale. Run simultaneous campaigns on the same domain, or across multiple websites, generating as much feedback as you need. Price: Plans start at $17 per month.

All Our Ideas. All Our Ideas is an open-source, data collection tool that has the scale, speed, and quantification of a survey, while still allowing for new information to “bubble up” from respondents. Start by creating a wiki survey, then invite participants to vote and add new ideas. Price: Free.

UsabilityHub. UsabilityHub lets you learn how visitors interact with your design before launching. Upload an image, and choose the type of test you’d like to run: a Five Second Test, a Click Test, or a Nav Flow Test. Specify how many people to test, or even bring your own testers. Get a report on the interactions each tester has with your design. Price: Free community use by taking tests. Paid plans start at $20 per month.

UserTesting. UserTesting seeks to provide fast and affordable user testing. Select your target audience. Have them test your website or a competitor’s website. Receive a video of a user performing tasks that you specify as they think out loud. You can see and hear where they get confused and frustrated. After you’ve received the test results, you can still interact with users and ask them follow-up questions. Price: $49 per user test.

UserTesting

Olark. Olark is a live-chat solution to talk your customers for sales and support. See visitors on your site, what they’re looking at, and where they’ve been. Set the number of chats to receive and get notified when new chats come in. Targeted Chat lets you set rules to interact only with customers who go to a specific page or perform specific behaviors. Manage relationships and encourage feedback with customer-management integrations. Price: Plans start at $15 per month.

Zoho Discussions. Zoho Discussions lets you set up your own customer support communities and private communities where problems and topics are discussed, and ideas are exchanged. It features rebranding tools, moderation, a reports dashboard, and more. Manage feedback, ideas, questions and problems under a single portal. Price: Free plan available for one moderator. Paid add-ons start at $3 per month.

Google Consumer Surveys. Google Consumer Surveys lets you reach out to your target consumer for feedback. Gauge the demand for new products and discover relevant shopper insights. Get graphs, clickable demographic segmentation, as well as statistically significant insights across those demographics, so your data is ready to use right away. Price: Standard surveys are 10¢ per complete for one question and $1.10 – $3.50 per complete for 2 to 10 questions.

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/75192-20-Tools-for-Customer-Feedback-Surveys 

4 Trust Indicators That Help Convert Online Shoppers

Visitors to your online store make an emotional decision about your business: Do they trust you or not?
Online shoppers, especially first time visitors, evaluate ecommerce sites in many ways, to decide whether you are trustworthy. They want to know if their personal data is safe. They want their privacy protected. They want to be confident that they will get what they ordered, when they expect it. They want to know that your customer service is there if they need it.

Fortunately, you can win new customers by displaying proven trust indicators at key places on your website. These badges, seals, and well-placed reminders can visibly reinforce that you can be trusted. As a result, you should see higher conversions and reduce shopping cart abandonment.
In this article, I’ll review four trust indicators that online shoppers typically look for.

 

1. Security Seals

Protecting data, avoiding phishing scams, and safety from malicious code are all top of mind for online shoppers. You can prove that your store is secure and clean of suspicious code in a couple of ways. First, your SSL vendor likely offers a seal as a part of its service. For example, Symantec, Comodo, and GeoTrust give you a code snippet to easily copy and paste into your website.
Second, a trust seal can be earned by passing security scans that detect any malware or suspicious redirects on your site. McAfee and Symantec are examples of popular trust seals that your visitors are likely to recognize.

The website for Metropolitan Museum of Art displays trust seals from McAfee and GeoTrust, among others.

 

2. Privacy Assurance

Securing customer data is just the start. Your shoppers want assurances that you are protecting their privacy and that you are not collecting or using their personal information for unacceptable purposes. To help protect consumers, governments around the world are now vigorously enforcing privacy laws and regulations on their behalf. A good way to build trust is to show that you are compliant with these rules. Vendors like TRUSTe can assess your data practices and provide ongoing monitoring. By achieving and maintaining compliance, you can display the trust seal of these vendors.

 

3. High Quality Service

Buyers also want to be confident that you deliver great service. They look to consumer advocate associations and the brands you sell to monitor service standards, such as:

• Honestly representing products and services you are selling;
• Access to and response from customer service teams;
• Return and refund policies;
• Speed of order processing and fulfillment;
• Clear disclosure of any terms and conditions.

A good indicator that your service is exceptional is to show badges that you earn by delivering what you promise. That could be as simple as showing that you are an authorized dealer for a particular brand. Or that you’ve been accredited by the Better Business Bureau or benchmarked against the highest quality retailers by StellaService, which measures and rates online customer service performance.

Zappos, the shoe retailer, displays the Stella Service seal, in addition to other trust indicators.

 

4. Guarantee Policies

Shoppers like to know they have options to get their money back if they are not satisfied with a purchase.
To help shoppers overcome doubt and trust you, it is common practice for businesses to offer money back guarantees, return and refund policies, or price-matching competitors. You should proudly show that you stand behind the products you sell. Do not simply provide a text link to your policy page in your footer. Display an attractive image next to your “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart” button to reinforce your claim.

How to Implement Trust Indicators

Here are best practices to implement those trust indicators so that they can have the biggest impact for you and your customers.

• Place it where they land. Don’t wait until the shopping cart flow to start displaying trust indicators. To keep visitors on your site, establish your credibility the moment they arrive. That first impression is usually on a product page or your home page. That’s where you should post your security, privacy and service badges. For example, Screens.com, a provider a wall art and room dividers, displays the “Norton Secured” SSL and security seal on its product pages.

Screens.com displays the “Norton Secured” SSL and security seal on its product pages.

Place it where they can see it. Your visitors have to see your trust indicators to have an impact. Avoid posting your seals and badges in the footer. Doing so reduces their value as they seem to be an afterthought tacked on at the bottom. Find some highly visible real estate on your page, ideally on a white background.

• Place it where they take action. The proximity to your call-to-action buttons is the best way to influence your shoppers’ actions. Reinforce that it’s okay to click. Show your guarantees near the “Add to cart” button. Show post-payment options near your checkout button. Display security seals next to the where shoppers enter their financial information or finalize their purchase.

• Make it meaningful. Choose the trust indicators that have feel are the most meaningful to your audience. There is no rule for the optimal number of seals that you should display, but you don’t want to dilute their value by covering every bit of space like a NASCAR race car. Go with recognized third parties and A/B test if you’re not sure.

• Earn it, don’t copy an image. Do not simply copy a desired trust badge and post it on your site. That’s copyright infringement and the vendors enforce it. Plus, you are not really saving any money as online shoppers are sophisticated enough to identify a fake, which instantly destroys any trust in your store.

Demonstrating that you’ve taken the steps to protect your shoppers’ security and delivering exceptional service are first steps to gaining trust. Display your trust indicators proudly. You’ve earned them. And visitors to your store are more likely to reward you by becoming buyers.







http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/75448-4-Trust-Indicators-That-Help-Convert-Online-Shoppers

8 Customer Service Quotes That Will Transform the Way You Run Your Business

Customer service isn't just what your business does after the sale in the form of addressing a support call or doing an exchange or issuing a refund, it's the-end to-end experience a customer has with all the touch points of your business.

Whether you sell online, in-store, or anywhere in-between, placing an emphasis on making exceptional customer service a core component or a foundational value for your business, will change your outlook on why it is you do what you do.

It will remind you of your reasons for starting your business in the first place, how your business adds value to the lives of your target customers, and why when it comes to the overall customer experience, there's always room for improvement.

To help you gain further insight into the importance of customer service, I've assembled eight customer service quotes from some of the most brilliant thinkers and doers so that you too can gauge the state of customers today and how it is you might be able to serve them better tomorrow.
Enjoy!

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http://www.shopify.co.uk/blog/15689356-8-customer-service-quotes-that-will-transform-the-way-you-run-your-business