From customer satisfaction to customer trust

Customer satisfaction and customer trust are two levels of problems If customer satisfaction is a kind of value judgment, customer trust is the behavior of customer satisfaction How to make the two achieve an effective combination, this paper makes some theoretical and practical discussion What is customer satisfaction? Generally speaking, customer satisfaction is the direct comprehensive evaluation of products and services provided by enterprises and employees, and the recognition of enterprises, products, services and employees by customers Customers evaluate products and services based on their value judgment Therefore, Philip Kotler believes that "satisfaction is a level of human feeling state, which comes from the comparison between the performance or output envisaged by a product and people's expectations" From the perspective of enterprises, the goal of customer service is not only to satisfy customers, but also the first step of marketing management "Our interest is not just to satisfy our customers, but to tap into the valuable things that our customers think can enhance our relationship," said William Taylor, President of American maintenance chemicals In the process of establishing long-term partnership between enterprises and customers, enterprises provide customers with "customer value" exceeding their expectations, so that customers can obtain satisfaction in every purchase process and post purchase experience Every satisfaction will enhance customers' trust in the enterprise, so that the enterprise can obtain long-term profits and development For enterprises, if they are satisfied with their products and services, customers will also spread their consumption feelings to other customers through word-of-mouth, expand the popularity of products, improve the image of enterprises, and constantly inject new impetus into the long-term development of enterprises But the real problem is that enterprises often equate customer satisfaction with trust, or even "customer loyalty" In fact, customer satisfaction is only the premise of customer trust, customer trust is the result; customer satisfaction is a positive evaluation of a product and a service, even if customers are satisfied with an enterprise only based on the products and services they accept If a product or service is not perfect, he is not satisfied with the enterprise, that is to say, it is a perceptual evaluation index Customer trust is the sense of trust that customers have to the brand products and the brand enterprises They can be rational to the success and disadvantage of the brand enterprises According to Bain company's survey, 65% and 85% of the customers who claim to be satisfied with the products and enterprises will turn to other products, and only 30% and 40% of the customers will buy the same products or the same model of the same products again What is customer trust? Customer trust refers to the customer's recognition and trust of a certain enterprise or brand's products or services It is the result of the continuous strengthening of customer satisfaction Unlike customer satisfaction, which tends to be perceptual, customer trust is the affirmation, recognition and trust of customers on the basis of rational analysis Generally speaking, customer trust can be divided into three levels: cognitive trust - it is formed directly based on products and services, because this kind of products and services just meet his personalized needs This trust is at the basic level, and it may be transferred due to changes in interest and environment Emotional trust - the lasting satisfaction obtained after using products and services, which may form the preference for products and services Behavioral trust - behavioral trust is formed only when the products and services provided by the enterprise become the indispensable needs and enjoyment of customers, which is manifested in the maintenance and repeated purchase of long-term relationships, as well as the focus on the enterprise and products, and seeking information to consolidate trust or prove untrustworthy information to prevent being bullied For a long time, managers believe that market share is the driving force of profits, which is supported by PIMS (profit impact of market share) model in the mid-1970s But Professor EarlSasser found that this view was not necessarily true because he found that a factor more closely related to high profits and rapid growth was customer trust, not market share A specious point of view in marketing management theory, customer loyalty is a widely used concept, but customer loyalty is actually just a misunderstanding When marketing experts put forward the concept of "customer loyalty", the supreme idea of enterprise management is mass production, that is, enterprises design products according to their own understanding of customer needs, and then reduce costs through long-term mass production to attract customers to buy In the whole process, the enterprise is dominant and in an active position; as the receiver of the enterprise's products, customers can only accept the products designed and produced by the enterprise for them, with poor customer selectivity Especially in the shortage environment, customers have to buy the same products repeatedly The illusion of repeat purchase is "customer loyalty" In fact, in the era of personalized perceptual consumption, there are many kinds of products, the homogenization of products is growing, and the shortening of product life cycle makes it impossible for customers to be loyal to an enterprise and a product for a long time On the other hand, the object of customer loyalty is enterprises or products, so customer loyalty is the loyalty of customers to enterprises or products, which is a product centered product, the current situation should be enterprise loyalty to customers Only by changing this concept can enterprises serve customers and maximize customer value The marketing guided by customer loyalty may lead to: the enterprise or product is respected independently, separated from the customer, and the service quality is poor; the enterprise abuses the consumption cases, sells the good faith of the customer, and lures the customer to consume in order to achieve the sales purpose; the quick success and instant profit in the sales process, no credit, no means, etc Professor Daniel's "bucket" regular customers are those who have a sense of trust in enterprises, products and services and repeatedly buy products or receive services In order to improve the market share and complete the increasing sales pressure, enterprises have more or less focused on finding new customers as the focus of marketing management, and ignored the role of old customers In fact, this is a mistake Professor Daniel charmich once used leaky bucket to describe this kind of behavior of enterprises When he taught marketing, he drew a bucket on the blackboard, and then drew many holes at the bottom of the bucket, and labeled these holes: rude, poor service, untrained employees, poor quality, poor selectivity, etc He compared the outflow of the bucket to customers He pointed out that in order to keep the original turnover, enterprises must continuously inject "new customers" from the top of the barrel to supplement the lost customers, which is an expensive and endless process Therefore, more and more enterprises begin to maintain the old customers by improving the service quality, because blocking the leaky barrels brings the improvement of "customer quality" rather than "customer quantity" The old customer is the most valuable wealth of an enterprise, and the lifetime value of an old customer is huge According to the survey, the lifetime income from a pastry lover is about 8000 dollars, and the lifetime income from a Cadillac owner is 332000 dollars The economic benefits of customer trust are considerable, which has been proved in other industries In recent years, the survey of service industry, such as software and banking, shows that customer trust increases by 5% and corporate income increases by 25% and 80% If a company consistently gives customers value-added returns and wins loyal customers, its market share and revenue will increase, and the cost of attracting and serving customers will decrease The company can invest the excess profits in a series of new activities, such as rewarding the old customers, providing better services for customers, improving the remuneration of employees, etc., which will lead to a series of chain reactions and form a virtuous circle of "enterprise profit customer trust" The benefits of customer trust to enterprises are various Customer trust leads to repeat purchase, which increases the revenue of the enterprise, and the longer the old customers stay, the larger the purchase quantity; because the cost of attracting customers is reduced, the enterprise cost is reduced A study shows that the cost of striving for a new customer is about twice as much as that of maintaining an old customer, and in the mature competitive market, the enterprise strives for The difficulty of new customers is very big; due to the "word-of-mouth effect", old customers will recommend others to buy so as to increase new customers; the service of enterprises to familiar old customers with rich consumption experience is more efficient and economic; the improvement of customer trust and enterprise economic benefits helps to improve the working conditions of enterprise employees, improve employee satisfaction, and improve the sense of belonging of employees, and then It can improve work efficiency, reduce recruitment and training costs, reduce staff loss, and further reduce costs, thus forming a virtuous cycle effect of strengthening customer trust Customer bribery can't cultivate customer trust Enterprises have a popular way to solicit and retain customers through discount or feedback, and call this kind of activity "loyalty marketing activity", which is essentially a kind of customer bribery, and has no effect on cultivating customer trust According to the report of the American Food Marketing Association, Switzerland has the lowest customer transfer rate (7%) and the highest customer transfer rate (24%) in the UK However, Switzerland with low transfer rate has the lowest customer loyalty marketing activity participation rate (15%), while the UK with high transfer rate has the highest customer loyalty marketing participation rate (83%) 12.7% of the customers who did not participate in such activities thought that these activities were too time-consuming, and it was not worth the discount 35.5% of the customers said they would still buy the same amount of things without these activities, and 87.5% of the customers said they would still buy goods from this store without these activities This also shows from one aspect that the biggest beneficiary of customer bribery is the general customers of the enterprise, they are the actual profit makers, not the trusters of the enterprise, and the enterprise gains more than it loses in this kind of activity However, it is very effective and desirable for enterprises to attract customers by means of discount or feedback for certain market purposes, such as clearance, rapid recovery of investment, seasonal transformation, avoiding delay leading to loss (such as aquatic products, fresh fruits, etc.), winning competitive advantage through key activities, etc However, the long-term application of this strategy will lead to price war, resulting in multiple damage, such as color TV industry In order to win the competition, enterprises should improve customer value and gain customer trust through uniqueness, such as Haier From customer satisfaction to customer trust, customer satisfaction and customer trust are two levels of problems If customer satisfaction is a kind of value judgment, customer trust is the behavior of customer satisfaction Therefore, we say that customer satisfaction is only the first step of customer trust, and customer satisfaction is the basis of customer trust At the same time, it needs to be clear that customer satisfaction does not necessarily lead to customer trust In the process from customer satisfaction to customer trust, the enterprise should make a promise