Creating Trust Online (Method 3)

There are 4 ways to establish trust with good customer service. If customers know they can trust your sales process, you'll get more sales.

This is what you need to do:

· Offer free services such as trial periods, free downloads or free lessons.

· Have a fair return policy. Make buying your product as risk-free as possible.

· Allow customers easy ways to get their questions answered.

· Keep customers in the loop. Confirm orders, emails and everything else.

Some of these steps will be covered in extensive detail in other tactics. Here we'll just cover the basics.

Offer Free Services

One of the easiest ways to have customers trust you and your product is to offer free trials, downloads or a free service

If you sell anything digital such as software, music, ebooks or online applications this part is easy.

A Fair Return Policy

A fair return policy does wonders for building trust and creating customers who rave about your product. We cover the process of creating a return policy in the tactic on Designing the Guarantee.

Allow Customers Easy Ways to get their Questions Answered

From the moment the customer has the slightest positive feeling about buying your product you must nurture this feeling and help them avoid any fears. The way to do this is to make your customer support system easy to use, fast and effecient.

This involves two things. 1. Having a well structured FAQ section on your site. 2. Having a phone or email address where potential buyers can contact you.

In the tactic on Customer Service we teach you a fast and efficient way to create a stellar customer support system that generates more sales.

Keep Customers in the Loop

As soon as a customer buys your product or signs up on your site, send an email that confirms their action and let them know the next steps. Using an autoresponder system like Autoresponse Plus lets customers receive instant notifications when they sign up or make a purchase.

Use these guidelines to keep customers in the loop for a signup or registration and a sale:

The Signup or Registration

Upon signing up, the customer should get a welcome message confirming that the signup was successful, reminding them what they signed up for and letting them know the download or activation instructions.

At the end of the trial period, or the end of the autoresponder free lesson period, the customer should get notified by email on what will happen next. Will they get a promo to make a purchase? Will their trial period end and their login get turned off? Let the customer know what's going on.

The Sale

In the brick-and-mortar world, it's said that the best time to do a promotion is within the first 4 weeks after the sale of a product.

In these first 4 weeks, customers are still looking for confirmation that they have made the right choice by purchasing the product. This confirmation is even more important in the online environment.

Make sure to answer customer questions within 24 hours. Stay in touch and be friendly and professional. Upon completing the sale the customer should immediately get a confirmation email.

When the product ships it's ideal to send the customer a second email notifying them of shipment and providing tracking information. A very good practice is to further email the customer after a few weeks to see if they have been using the product and to ask for feedback.

You can also use this opportunity to upsell them on further related offerings. Why bother to remind the customer to use the product? Well many people order things and then procrastinate on using them. Have you ever ordered an exercise machine from TV and then put it aside?

Many people have. Well, these customers will often not buy from you again unless they consume or use your current product. So, encourage them to use it.