The TrustBuilder Story
TrustBuilder began out of desperation. I knew each of my clients had big problems. Customer experience problems, customer relationship problems, negative review problems, and unable to get their happy customers to provide reviews. The customer experience problems were unique and very difficult to pinpoint. The business owners also knew they had problems, but they were busy and didn't want a time sucking solution. And it needed to be inexpensive for most small businesses.
I zeroed in on three major problems my clients needed help with:
- Advertising wasn't attracting enough new customers to justify the cost;
- Customer loyalty was declining and they were loosing too many long time customers;
- They weren't getting those all important customer reviews that attracted new customers.
Advertising worked, somewhat, but the return just didn't justify spending more. And like any small business marketing budgets were limited. I needed to find the key to making advertising produce more new customers, for less money.
I knew my clients operated their businesses well, but something wasn't right. Long time loyal customers weren't returning. Big problem was we couldn't figure out what these customers wanted, and what they weren't happy with. How their customer's needs were changing. We needed a way to measure customer satisfaction and improve customer loyalty. The cost of losing a customer had become too high!
Business owners tried asking customers about the service they received, but got little feedback. People just smiled and said everything was good. And then didn't return... We needed to find out why these customers were leaving, and fix it! Fast.
The owners tried getting staff to ask for customer reviews. But employees hated asking. As one grumbled, "its like begging for recognition of the good work we do. So wrong". And asking for reviews made their customers uncomfortable. As one customer snarled, "if you're so good why do you have to ask for reviews?". We needed a way for employees to save face AND customers to provide feedback in a way they felt safe.
And all this investigation into how their business was (wasn't...) functioning took a LOT of time. Small business managers are over-worked as it is. I recognized they needed an automated system that took a minimum of their precious time, and solved these critical problems.
They needed to:
- Get more new customers from a limited advertising budget;
- Improve customer loyalty and retention (keep customers they had).
- Ask for customer reviews in a way that was easy, fast, and in a way the customers felt comfortable. And the employees...
TrustBuilder took a lot of trial and error, and hard work. But once we got it dialed in it worked better than hoped for!
- Business owners loved it.
- Customers loved it.
- New customer count jumped up.
It works. Amazingly. Well.