I make and sell a new sales software for business clients. I've thought about ways I've gained or lost their trust in different situations. Why is this important? They pay 1-3K monthly. Clients evaluate the product on first impressions and initial communication and onboarding. If you lose them early, it's not profitable. The bulk of profit comes from long-term satisfied customers, that trust us enough to upgrade and migrate.
This is true in most business that sell retainers, subscriptions, etc. which is a great business model for predictable cash flow.
Ways we gain trust:
1. High responsiveness - I answer emails quickly and call them if it's urgent. Not "We will look into it". I prioritize the fixes so we can reply quickly with the problem fixed already.
2. Advice - Client asked a question about their store locations, I researched it and gave a deep answer. Another client I told about a competitor offering a new similar service to ours, and told them to check it out. This is so they can test it out for me, and because I'm confident we are better.
3. I flagged that some feature was not ready yet that they had expected.
Ways we lose trust:
1. Overpromising - I give many optimistic (sadly unrealistic) timelines. This works once or twice, but it leads to quick fixes from our side to meet the timelines and disappointment from client side if we don't.
2. Not enough quality control - The clients are inside the platform daily and study every detail. We are busy selling it, developing it. Many bugs have been found in a reactive way, not testing enough. You need user scenarios with defined objectives to go through yourself as a user, to realize these mistakes. There's also the adage "eat your own dog food." It's very easy to lost the client perspective of the service.
3. Not enough communication - Users appreciate updates, rather than discovering the good news on their own. There's "good news" I could have delivered but did not communicate.
Your lessons dealing with client trust?
This is true in most business that sell retainers, subscriptions, etc. which is a great business model for predictable cash flow.
Ways we gain trust:
1. High responsiveness - I answer emails quickly and call them if it's urgent. Not "We will look into it". I prioritize the fixes so we can reply quickly with the problem fixed already.
2. Advice - Client asked a question about their store locations, I researched it and gave a deep answer. Another client I told about a competitor offering a new similar service to ours, and told them to check it out. This is so they can test it out for me, and because I'm confident we are better.
3. I flagged that some feature was not ready yet that they had expected.
Ways we lose trust:
1. Overpromising - I give many optimistic (sadly unrealistic) timelines. This works once or twice, but it leads to quick fixes from our side to meet the timelines and disappointment from client side if we don't.
2. Not enough quality control - The clients are inside the platform daily and study every detail. We are busy selling it, developing it. Many bugs have been found in a reactive way, not testing enough. You need user scenarios with defined objectives to go through yourself as a user, to realize these mistakes. There's also the adage "eat your own dog food." It's very easy to lost the client perspective of the service.
3. Not enough communication - Users appreciate updates, rather than discovering the good news on their own. There's "good news" I could have delivered but did not communicate.
Your lessons dealing with client trust?
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