Transparency: the Key to Improve Relationships With Customers

Transparency is extremely important for a company’s success, not just a popular saying. The term “operating effortlessly for the customers to see and verify your performed actions” implies that you are working efficiently and effectively for your customers to be able to see and verify what you have done. Simply, openness, communication, and accountability. Although companies may be reluctant to be transparent with their internal workings, this should not stop them from being transparent with their customers. If you want to be successful, it is important that you are honest and open with your customers from the beginning. Michael Winehouse, a member of the Forbes Council, published an article in which he argues that being transparent is scary, but it is also essential for business growth and gaining customer trust. Transparency not only helps you deliver better service to your current customers, but also helps attract new customers. Maintaining customer loyalty is important in keeping your business successful.

Transparency in business fosters a culture of accountability and helps set businesses up for success. It makes sure that you have the right information on prices and deadlines for products and services, and that you can actually get the product or service. When you are honest with your clients, they are more likely to be happy and stay with you.

If your company is more transparent, it will be more efficient because it will be able to focus on its strengths instead of its weaknesses. The time that is saved by efficiencies in the company’s processes is reinvested in meeting the needs of customers to the best of the company’s abilities. Further, transparency helps in building trust with customers. If you want your clients to trust you, you need to be honest about your services and products. Anxieties and suspicions are no longer a problem because consumers can easily find information. This practice is very effective in developing a strong relationship between a company and its clients, which leads to customers staying with the company, and being loyal to it.

Importance of Transparency in Customer Relationship

Transparency is one of the key values that businesses should keep in mind when developing client relationships. Customer relationships and employee development are the two most important aspects of the company.

Having the two work side by side should improve company performance. Since employees have direct contact with clients, they should be a good representation of the company’s values, traits, and engagements. Change is a constant factor in business.

Make sure your employees are aware of any changes that have been made or are coming up. When there is open communication, it creates a good relationship between customers, employees, the organization, and other people involved.

Better Negotiations

Making your company visible helps to establish a good working and engagement relationship between the firm, clients and employees. A client needs all the information provided by the company before starting the purchase process in order to engage the company.

If there are any changes or adjustments, everyone should be promptly notified. Transparency is important for successful negotiations as it requires both parties to be open about their needs and desires. The openness leads to trust from clients.

The relationship between a business and its customers is important in order to build trust, encourage referrals, and drive sales and customer satisfaction. A culture of transparency is helpful in pricing and delivering services. Negotiations also allow clients to receive services at a set price or with a discount. This company is known for its pricing adjustments that come upfront in order to give clients maximum transparency during the price allocation.

Client Retention

Transparency is a key way to develop and keep customers for life. Organizations gain customer loyalty when they have competitive prices, quality products and services, and are open with their customers.

In order to maintain a long-term relationship with a customer, regular communication between the customer and the company is necessary. Sustained communication of information makes sure everyone is on the same page. This will allow the clients to freely give their suggestions, ideas, and feedback on the product.

If customers know what to expect and the company is open about its policies, customers will be more likely to continue using the company’s services. Businesses can build customer loyalty by Simple acts performed by businesses and employees

Clients are more likely to buy your products and support your brand if they feel that you are honest. When employees and brands are in communication and on the same page, it is possible to have high customer retention.

Meeting customer satisfaction measures is important for the smooth running of the business and handling of clients. Transparency helps companies keep their customers by making them happy and fostering trust through openness and involving them in all company processes.

When everyone involved has access to as much information as they want from the company, it becomes easy for them to negotiate. If customers can always count on you to have the information they need, they’ll be more likely to trust and stay loyal to your business.

Increased Efficiency

The most efficient businesses are those that have a well-developed system for obtaining customer feedback, including complaints. A small business enterprise that is completely transparent will become more efficient in its operations by setting up an excellent company culture.

A culture of transparency at work encourages strong relationships between employees and customers, leading to a more efficient operation.

When clients have easy access to project information, the company can operate more efficiently and professionally. These operations become efficient. They prevent client backlash, withdrawals, and loss of loyalty to avoid revenue loss.

How to be radically transparent with Customers

In a future where customer data is a valuable commodity, it will be important to gain the trust of consumers. Companies that share information about what data they collect, allow customers to control their personal data, and offer fair compensation in return will be trusted and will earn ongoing and even expanded access. If companies are not transparent about how they are using personal data, they will lose customers’ trust and eventually their business.

Trust and Transparency

Research shows that firms may be able to access consumers’ data by offering value in return, but that trust is an essential facilitator. The more trust consumers have in a brand, the more likely they are to share their data.

There have been many studies that have found that being transparent about how you use and protect consumers’ data helps to build trust. We surveyed consumers about 46 companies from seven different categories to see what effect this had. The respondents were asked to rate how trustworthy different firms are with sensitive personal data on a scale from completely trustworthy to completely untrustworthy.

The groups with the highest ratings on the scale were primary care doctors, new finance firms such as PayPal and China’s Alipay, followed by e-commerce companies, consumer electronics makers, banks and insurance companies, and telecommunications carriers. This was followed by internet giants (such as Google and Yahoo) and the government. Entertainment and Retail companies were ranked below the others, with Facebook coming in last of the social networks.

If a company is not considered trustworthy, it will have a hard time collecting certain types of data, even if it offers something valuable in exchange. Firms that are highly trusted may be able to collect data simply by asking, because customers are satisfied with past benefits received and confident that the company will guard their data. If two companies offer the same value for data, the company that is more trusted will have customers who are more willing to share their data. If Amazon and Facebook both wanted to launch a mobile wallet service, Amazon would be more successful than Facebook because Amazon received good ratings in our survey and Facebook had low ratings. The equation mentioned could be vital for Amazon in terms of distinguishing itself from competitors.

Enlightened Data Principles

Forward-looking companies are incorporating data privacy and security considerations into product development from the start, following three principles. Ideally companies should practice all three principles. The examples below each highlight one principle.

Teach your customers.

Users will not trust you if they do not understand what you are doing. How does one of our clients educate consumers about its use of highly sensitive personal data?

This text is discussing a client that anonymous participants from the general public can exchange biomedical information with. This client compiles genomic data on these participants. Since this data is so sensitive, it is closely guarded. Building trust with participants at the outset is essential. So the project has focused on making education and informed consent central to people’s experience.

Before receiving a kit for collecting a saliva sample for analysis, volunteers must read a text about the potential consequences of having their genome sequenced—including the possibility of discrimination in employment and insurance—and after reading it, must give a preliminary online consent to the process. The kit comes with a hard copy of a more detailed agreement. Once you sign it and return it with the sample, the exchange can include your anonymized genomic information in the database. If a participant does not return the signed consent form, her data will not be exchanged. Users can change their minds about giving access to their data at any time.

Give them control.

Even more developed than before, the principle of building control into data exchange is something that is being worked on in the Metadistretti e-monitor project. This is a project that frog is collaborating on with Flextronics and the University Politecnico di Milano, among other partners. Patients with heart conditions participate by wearing an e-monitor, which collects ECG data and sends it to medical professionals and other caregivers via smartphone. Patients can view all their own data and decide how much data to share with others using a browser and an app.

Networks of health care providers, family and friends, or fellow users and patients can be created and different types of information can be sent to each network. In this approach, the patient is in charge of their own data, which is a major departure from the traditional paternalistic view of medicine, where the patient didn’t have access to their own data.

Deliver in-kind value.

The music service Pandora was built on this principle. When you sign up for Pandora, you voluntarily give them your age, gender, and zip code. As you use the service, you tag the songs you like or don’t like. Pandora creates a profile of each person’s musical tastes based on the information provided so that it can more accurately select songs to stream. The more information users provide, the better the selection becomes. In the free version of its service, Pandora uses data to target advertising towards users. The customers get to listen to the music they enjoy for free, and they also get to see ads that are more relevant to them. 80 million people actively use the free service, which indicates that consumers are happy with the trade.

In understanding that customers are most willing to share data when they know what value they’ll receive in return, Pandora designed its service accordingly. One way to effectively set up this exchange is to start slowly by requesting a few pieces of low-value data that can be used to improve a service. As long as there is a connection between the data that is being collected and the improvements that are being made, customers will be more willing to share additional information as they become more comfortable with the service.

If your company still needs another reason to pursue the data principles we’ve described, consider this: Countries around the world are becoming stricter with businesses when it comes to how they handle personal data.

Companies have an opportunity to make a difference in this moment. Abiding by local rules is only required, or they can help lead the change. If a company only does the bare minimum to comply with standards and regulations, they may avoid any penalties or punishment, but the consumers won’t trust the company and may even lose faith in it. Adopting the most stringent data privacy policies will make a company immune to legal issues and let consumers know that the company values their privacy, giving it a competitive edge. As we move into an economy where data is increasingly important, it is essential that consumers trust the businesses that they are sharing this information with.