Being one of the most important businesses in the world, financial services are extremely reliant upon the trust of their customers. Unfortunately, public perception and credibility in the financial sector have been hit hard recently, that’s why companies should combat this trend in order to regain credibility and avoid losing their customers.
So what do we mean by establishing credibility and why is it so important? Financial products are intangible and often complex which means that companies should get closer to customers and earn their loyalty.
The well-known fact, that it is cheaper for businesses to nurture loyalty of existing customers, rather than to invest into finding new ones. In fact, by putting more emphasis into increasing loyalty rather than into marketing, you get more customer referrals and finally, they provide great reviews. In a social media world where everything you do is right there on the Internet, you need great reviews from your customers. That’s why you need to consider how much you are ready to spend on making your customers happy by providing improvements in the way you do business.
Run a Blog and Be Social
Some businesses are more suited to blogging than others, and financial services are among those businesses. Such complex services rarely become self-explanatory, that’s why companies should consider using their in-house experts who will contribute content in their particular area of expertise. Suncorp, Australian finance, insurance, and banking company provides their customers with a steady stream of fresh, original and valuable content. Whether it is banking or investment by letting them write both basic how-to’s and explain complicated concepts, you will considerably increase your customers’ financial literacy.
Another important thing for your reputation is to be social, and that means acquiring as many of the social profiles as possible. The most important ones to have are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and if you have an opportunity to create videos then Youtube as well. Any business should control the Google results pages, which means that your first page should include your company website, blog, social media pages and positive reviews. Another good thing to have is your press releases as they are almost always ranked high.
Educate Your Customer
Companies that deal with financial products should do a lot of education for their clients on issues that are beyond just their products. Binary Options Australia, a broker that provides a wide range of trading options, fills the gap between their customers and services they provide by writing an informative guide to trading binary options.
Prevent Damage to Brand Reputation
Finally, stay on the safe side and identify potential crises before they escalate. Concentrate on monitoring social media and check what client posts about your brand. Create a relevant team that will receive alerts whenever any negative review comes to a surface. Such actions are especially important for financial services which should react at once to decrease the number of negative comments and reviews.
Whatever happens, don’t argue. This means if your company has been mentioned on a forum and there are some negative reviews about your products the last thing you should do is spend numerous posts about why your company is doing a good job or why services are good. Because what happens over time is such posts accumulate and can have as many as hundreds of comments which will rank high in Google. So, our recommendation is if someone has a bad experience with your services, respond one time and move that response to the website that you want in order to continue the discussion there.
Remember that trust is a foundation on which any business is built, accordingly, earning customer trust and loyalty should be of crucial importance to your company.
