Customer perception refers to how a customer sees and feels about a company’s products, services, and offered support. It includes their first impression and the opinion they form about your brand, whether positive or negative.
When you can properly identify and monitor customer perception, you can determine the strengths and weaknesses of your business. It will help you develop a more customer-centric approach to your business.
Read on to discover more about customer perception and why it is important to your business endeavors.
Why is customer perception important?
Customer perception affects consumer behaviors and builds memories and feelings to drive their satisfaction and loyalty.
A survey conducted by PwC reveals that one in three customers will leave a brand they love even after one bad experience. This illustrates the importance of meeting and exceeding customers’ expectations and how it’s just as crucial as other business and product growth strategies such as design and pricing.
Expectations are driven by customer perception, which makes it a crucial aspect of a business. If a company can align its values on products and services with customer perception, customers are far more likely to continue purchasing.
Factors that affect customer perception
How exactly is customer perception formed? Here, we’ve listed the factors that affect how consumers create a perception of your business:
Customer reviews
Almost all digital shoppers rely heavily on online reviews before finalizing their orders. That’s why comment sections, reviews, and recommendations play a huge role in how prospective customers perceive your brand.
Positive reviews are great, but what about the negative ones? Going through and dealing with the negative comments takes a toll on you, but it is also one way to improve your brands’ customer perception.
Addressing the roots of all customers’ complaints and dislikes in an empathetic way can show them how sincere you are in doing business with them.
Marketing efforts
Marketing is any company activity that aims to promote a product or service. Marketing efforts encompass advertising, selling, and delivering products to buyers.
Your business website, social pages, and ad campaigns all contribute to your brand’s overall image. Marketing efforts should be creative, trendy, and tailored to the preferences of your target audiences.
Advertising
In advertising, businesses that utilize promotional tools can attract customers to engage and interact with them. Advertising in traditional media such as television is still highly relevant up to this day.
When people see advertisements of people using a particular product, they also think about their own needs and instantly reflect on the ad. Ads should be tailored in such a way that they can catch the consumers’ attention and persuade them to buy that product.
Influencer reviews
In the peak of the social media age, influencers or public figures have created their own line of products and services. Since they have a huge number of following, they can easily make an item go “viral” or trendy.
Followers adore their icons, and whatever they’re using, they would want to use them too. Their reviews and recommendations matter to their followers greatly. Having an influencer endorsing your business is a smart way to engage internet shoppers and increase your sales.
Social media
Social media marketing has given all kinds of businesses an incredible edge to amplify their branding.
Social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube have been the top priority for many organizations that want to elevate their marketing needs. These social platforms have been proven effective for many marketers to grow their reach in promoting their products and services.
Customer service
We’ve mentioned at the start that customer perception also includes peoples’ opinions and experience of a company’s customer support services. This is largely dictated by how your business delivers customer service.
Customer service refers to the kind of help you extend to your customers. Your support teams have an indispensable role in making your customers happy, and they also have an impact on customer dissatisfaction.
With this in mind, you have to ensure that you’re not only resolving their problems. You should also deliver the solutions in the best way possible.
The key to a positive customer’s perception
Consumer perception may be a very difficult field to navigate, but perfecting this endeavor will positively impact the buying pattern of your customers.
The factors we’ve mentioned above play a huge role in how customer perception will play into the minds of your valued customers and prospects. Make sure that you’re looking at the right areas to improve—whether it’s your social media performance, advertisements, or customer service.
The key to a positive customer perception is constant monitoring of these factors to get the best possible outcome.
