Establishing Trust and Loyalty with Customers for Organizational Success

Learning Outcomes

Learning Outcomes

1: Establish and maintain trust with customers.
2: Relate the role of customer and brand loyalty to organizational success.
3: Explain customer relationship management and explain its importance to quality service.
4: Develop the service provider characteristics that will enhance customer loyalty.
5: Describe the provider’s responsibility for establishing and maintaining positive customer relationships.
6: Identify strategies that can be used to make customers feel like they are number one.
7: Discuss strategies that can enhance customer satisfaction.
8: Define quality service.

The Role of Trust

a) Trust is at the heart of any relationship, especially when there is an exchange of money for products or services.

b) For trust to start and grow, the customers must believe several things about the service providers and their organization:

c) Service providers and the organization have the customer’s best interests in mind before, during, and after the transaction.

d) Service providers and the organization are honest and forthcoming with customers and their goal is to deliver the best products and services possible in a timely manner and at a fair price.

e) Service providers have quality products and services that are backed by a guarantee that should something go wrong, it will be quickly and earnestly taken care of.

f) For customers to continue doing business with service providers, they must trust service providers and their organization.

g) Even when service providers win trust and achieve customer satisfaction, the customer relationship is very fragile.

The good news for North American businesses is that as the economic recession has started to show signs of slowing down and reversing, customer satisfaction levels for a number of industries have begun a slow movement toward improvement on the University of Michigan

American Customer Service Index (ACSI) scale of 100 possible points.

While organizations are starting to gain access to more capital due to loosening of restrictions on lending and other economic factors, the average consumer has yet to experience higher income flows or levels of disposable income.

Part of the trust equation is gaining consumer satisfaction with products and services offered by a provider.