Today, the relationship with the client is a primary activity in any company, regardless of its line of business. No company would exist if it did not have customers to serve, therefore, thousands of companies in the world dedicate a large part of their time and effort to trying to increase the number of customer retention and their degree of satisfaction.
The explosive growth of the Internet is changing the expectations of consumers and making the transition to e-business a matter of survival against competitors. Customers demand safer, faster and more personalized services, so companies are forced to implement e-business solutions in order to market their products more effectively and improve the services offered to their customers.
One of the greatest difficulties for the development of electronic business on a global scale is the distrust of people in the "virtual" world. For these reasons, and if e-business is to develop properly, mechanisms must be established that guarantee trust between the parties that will carry out the commercial transaction. The virtual world also requires establishing trust parameters in order to obtain the advantages of electronic marketing.
Introduction
Gaining confidence is a process of gathering experiences over time. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that the level of confidence increases or decreases based on each one of the commercial experiences with the counterparty. The trust building process begins when the individual perceives indications or forms, in which it is suggested that the company can be trustworthy. Both customers and suppliers are aware that these forms are conceived and designed to project trust. These forms become stronger over time and eventually become traditional factors like reliability and honesty.
Para alcanzar el éxito en la economía global de nuestros días, es necesario satisfacer las necesidades de los clientes superando incluso sus expectativas. Ofreciendo a los clientes (compradores, proveedores, distribuidores o vendedores) confianza, facilidad de uso y un importante servicio que va más allá de una simple página Web. Principalmente, brindándoles la seguridad y la privacidad en Internet sobre su información personal.
E-business is built on trust. In the everyday world, trust is generated from personal relationships, physical signatures, and any other evidence. On the other hand, in the online world, trust is created without verifiable physical evidence. Instead, digital identities are created to provide credible evidence that the customer is who they claim to be the same seller. (Lehrhofer, Johannes 2002).
Although trust in society and corporations is always very low, now is a good time for businesses to adopt a trust-based marketing strategy (Sultan, Fareena; Mooraj, Hussain 2001). Increasing customer power will lead to a new paradigm for marketing, a paradigm based on customer recommendation by providing honest and open advice and information.
Customer power is growing, they now have tools that inform them about trust in relationships and help them make their own decisions.
There are some trends that increase the power of customers such as increased access to information, access to alternatives, simple transactions, increased customer communication, increased skepticism, decreased media capacity, overcapacity and saturation of markets. (Urban, Glen. 2003)
Each of them is described below:
- Increased access to information
Customers today are much happier having more independent access to product and service information. For example, many car buyers prefer to use the Internet to search for models, features, and prices.
- Access to more alternatives
Comparison of websites, online searches allow all customers to find the best products at the best cost. For example, travelers have the possibility to search different websites, different flight, hotel or package rates and choose the most convenient one. The Internet has had a major impact on how to make information richer and reach more home customers.
- Simpler transactions
The Internet simplifies transactions for both home and industrial customers. Customers can now connect directly with suppliers and easily purchase products and services. For example, you can already buy in the online supermarket (soriana.com, suplaza.com, etc.), thus avoiding the tedious queue and unnecessary delays, the order arrives at your door at the time that You want, in addition to that there is a wide flexibility in payments.
- Increased communication between clients
In the past, bad companies lost customers very quickly. In the worst case, dissatisfied customers spread the word of their bad experience to their friends, resulting in a chain reaction of not buying from the company that caused the problem. But now, the Internet provides a global reach for those upset customers. Those Internet sites focused on the service preference index and discussion forums accelerate the exit of bad products, bad services and bad companies from the virtual world.
- Increased skepticism
Corporate scandals, large business losses have been the cause of anti-globalization accusations and protests. Meanwhile, endless buying recommendations in those situations reinforce customer cynicism. The combined attacks of these events have created general mistrust. In fact the yellow press is the one that has done the most damage. People have stopped using some products due to the negative environment.
- Decreased media capacity
Today's clients are more difficult to reach and influence than their gullible ancestors. Just as customers have increased their information flow, the communication channels through which companies post information have become less effective. The fragmentation of the medium, the skepticism of the client, and the time pressure of the modern lifestyle make it more difficult for companies to put their information in front of an unsuspected public.
- Overcapacity and saturation of markets
The downturn in the economy has led to a reduction in demand, but even before the recession, capacity increased relative to demand. Where there are cars, electronics, financial services, travel, telecommunications, capacity substantially exceeds demand. This excess capacity affects margins and lower prices.
The point here is that the Internet is a great enabler of customer power, they are now more educated and informed than before.
Trust is more than an adjective of your own congratulations, which can be attached to company publications. Trust means supporting long-term customer interests. Trust is hard to earn, and easy to lose, but when the company gets it, you see great benefits.
Trust increases customer loyalty as a return of customer satisfaction to buy repeatedly and expand the range of purchases of your products. The trust provides business benefits in 4 areas (Urban, Glen. 2003):
- Reduction of customer acquisition costs
Trust reduces acquisition costs in two ways. First, it lowers the costs of acquiring each new customer. Instead of squandering money on marketing to build trust, companies are looking for a good reputation for word-of-mouth information. Second, trust decreases the number of new customers the company needs to stay on the cutting edge of growth. With confidence, companies are not forced to constantly be acquiring new customers to replace unsatisfied ones.
- Higher profit margins
Trust increases the price the company can charge, customers agree to pay more for a quality product from a company that instills trust. Many clients are willing to pay more for a more reliable service.
- Increase
Trust also helps the company to diversify and expand its portfolio with more satisfied customers. When the company becomes a trusted supplier, customers look to the company for more products and services in various categories, which motivates the company to continue growth.
- Long-term competitive advantage
Trust gives the company a long-term competitive advantage. Advisory relationships with valued clients help the company innovate in the direction of market leadership.
The steps to build and maintain customer trust are: start with a continuous e-business plan and avoid the dangerous pitfalls of e-commerce. (Anonymous 2000)
To create a trust strategy according to Glen Urban (2003), the following steps must be followed:
- Strive for transparency
Transparency involves providing a channel in which customers can monitor the status of their orders, services, and obtain additional information about the company and its products. Transparency also helps the company retain customers in some unwanted event, problem, or failure. The customer should see that the company is working to rectify the failure.
- Make excellent products and services
Quality is a prerequisite for trust. Without good products and services, a company cannot, in good faith, recommend that its customers buy its offers. Despite the price, quality is a crucial property of trusted products.
- Realign to be on the client's side
Companies and customers face basic conflicts over cost, value, and pricing. Customers are looking for more products and companies are looking for higher profits. Companies can align themselves to be more on the client's side by creating greater trust and the opportunity to benefit substantially through long-term relationships.
- Help the client to help himself
Building trust means teaching the customer that your company is on their side. A good approach to this is to help clients help themselves. This tactic expands from the notion of a sales advisory relationship to a purely consultative engagement. At certain levels, helping clients help themselves is a more proactive extension of the company's realignment to the client side. The difference is that realignment is an internal effort to reduce conflicts of interest between the company and its customers. In contrast, helping the client is an actively external tactic.
- Put customers to work
Realizing that customers are smart and responsible, companies have chosen to pass on information and mutual service to them. Both the company and customers benefit from the change from the one-way strategy to the two-way strategy, based on a relationship of trust. This strategy is based on the client providing information (questionnaires, opinions, problem solving, etc.) that allow them to learn more about their behavior.
- Compare our products with competitor products
In a world where customer power is very high, trying to introduce inappropriate products to customers is more likely to create enemies than profit. If a company becomes trustworthy, it should be willing to tell its customers when to search for competing products. Honesty is the best policy when there is a risk that dishonesty will be revealed.
- Create a supply chain based on trust
A company is as trusted as its business partners. Companies that implement a trust-based strategy must work with partner channels to build and strengthen trust. The actions of dishonest business partners can damage a well earned reputation of trust.
- Make trust transcend all company functions
Creating a strategy based on trust requires changes throughout the company. The culture of the organization must reflect the primacy of building customer trust. This culture of building trust extends beyond customers to include winning the trust of employees and suppliers.
On the other hand, Eduardo Manchón (2003) tells us that for him the key factors to generate trust are: feeling of belonging to the real world, ease of use. Professionalism, transparency, commercial implications and amateurism.
According to John Buckner (2000), there are three levels that leading trusted institutions seem to follow to maintain their web presence:
Access to information
Investment strategy and performance measure
Online transaction capacity
Trust is not for everyone, many companies face competitive situations, operational conditions or customer characteristics that exclude trust. These situations can be the following (Urban, Glen. 2003):
Competitive aspects that prevent the use of trust
- Commodities: Products that have become basic use for customers Monopolies: Companies that have become a monopoly are not much affected by not using the trust strategy. The customer simply buys from him because there is no other option on the market.
Operations aspects that prevent the use of trust
- Uncontrollable quality: On airlines, customers buy flights regardless of the weather, air traffic, etc.
- Uncontrollable amount and short-term financial focus
Customer aspects that prevent the use of trust
- Short-term customer-based and low-impact products
conclusion
In today's e-business environment, where changes are rapid and impossible to predict, the most important thing is to maintain fruitful and lasting relationships with customers. You have to get to the market before anyone else and stay ahead of the competition. The use of cutting-edge technologies and processes allows us to be more competitive and offer greater confidence to customers.
Lack of trust has long been a great barrier to entering the world of Internet transactions. To the extent that browsing is not risky, visitors to a site are usually willing to provide information such as age, gender and even income level in exchange for a free subscription or for free access to a restricted area of the website.
All this changes when involving monetary transactions. It happens in real life, we don't see why it should change in virtual life. By the time money concepts are incorporated into navigation, all caution alarms tune and go on, increasing the level of mistrust.
E-business has great potential in terms of financial transactions, but it has not yet been developed in half of its possibilities. However, more and more companies are betting on this form of commerce, which not only turns out to be faster and more efficient, but also saves significant costs.
The problem that arises is that business is based on a display of security and trust, while the Internet is characterized by anonymity and insecurity.
Consumers' concern about the privacy of their personal information significantly influences their willingness to participate in online business exchanges. But this barrier of trust is beginning to erode
Building customer confidence will increase profits and be more effective; create lasting ties with them to deepen and secure business relationships; and achieve the flexibility to create and respond to new income opportunities in the fastest way. Therefore, it is necessary to offer customers something more than a Web page, it is necessary to provide them with a service that increases the value of the business.
We must always remember that an organization subsists thanks to its customers, so the relationship that exists with them must be the best possible, always trying to satisfy all their needs, always maintaining that trust that allows generating customer loyalty to with the company.
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