{"id":23948,"date":"2022-10-06T17:00:14","date_gmt":"2022-10-06T17:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revuze.it\/blog\/\/"},"modified":"2022-11-01T11:49:40","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T11:49:40","slug":"customer-perception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revuze.it\/blog\/customer-perception\/","title":{"rendered":"Customer Perception: Making Consumers See Your Brand Positively"},"content":{"rendered":"
The concept of customer perception might seem like a simple thing, but in reality, there\u2019s far more nuance involved than you might think. At its core, customer perception is your customers\u2019 opinions of you and is a key factor in a consumer\u2019s choices.<\/span><\/p>\n Being seen positively by consumers is a must to generate new leads while also retaining your current ones. Almost<\/span> 70%<\/span><\/a> of consumers say they\u2019re more inclined to spend more money with a company they trust to treat them well, rather than go for a cheaper alternative.<\/span><\/p>\n And trust plays a big part in how customers perceive your brand.<\/span><\/p>\n But where should you start? Customer perception is a big topic, and countless factors influence it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This guide is a good start. It will help you understand what\u2019s behind customer perception and, most importantly, how to measure and improve to thrive in today\u2019s market.<\/span><\/p>\n Let\u2019s get started!<\/span><\/p>\n Customer perception refers to your customers\u2019 awareness, opinions, and general feelings about the brand and its products or services.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s shaped not only by direct experience with your brand but by all surrounding interactions like news reports, advertisements, word of mouth, etc.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s important to remember customer perception isn\u2019t the same across sectors. It can differ based on location and demographics.<\/span><\/p>\n For instance, Home Depot is very well regarded in the US, but when they tried to expand into China they didn\u2019t consider Chinese culture\u2019s adversity to DIY. By the end of their six-year expansion attempt, they had to <\/span>shut their stores and deal with a $160 million loss<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Customer perception can be tricky to quantify. It isn\u2019t necessarily directly connected to the overall quality of the products or services you provide but how they see you.<\/span><\/p>\n You must remember your customers are human, and emotions and logic mix together. It\u2019s not enough to look at the value proposition.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s why you need to dig deeper to measure how customers feel about you. Good places to start are:<\/span><\/p>\n This NEPA global survey on food habits is a great example of how perception affects our purchasing behavior. When asked about sustainable meat alternatives, only <\/span>25% of UK consumers<\/span><\/a> said they would like to see lab-grown meat on their local supermarket shelves.<\/span><\/p>\n The customer perception process is exactly what it says on the tin. It is the process by which customers sense, organize, interpret and respond to anything related to your brand – be it a particular product, the brand as a whole, or somewhere in between.<\/span><\/p>\n Let\u2019s break down this process by looking at an advertisement.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This all happens within a second or so, leaving little to no room for conscious thought to be involved.<\/span><\/p>\n But just because this process happens quickly and automatically, it doesn\u2019t mean we can\u2019t predict quite well what will happen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When running an ad campaign, you don\u2019t just whip up a graphic and run along with it. You try and understand what your target audience will take from it and how it will affect their perception of your brand.<\/span><\/p>\n Later, you can collect customer perception data via the previously suggested methods. This will help you better understand your ideal customer and the effects of your latest campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n You can find a great example of this if you look to KFC\u2019s 2018 ad, which issued as an apology rather than a simple advertisement.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In early 2018, KFC in the UK ran out of chicken. That\u2019s right, a business that mainly sells chicken ran out of chicken.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Since this naturally grabbed the attention of the local press, KFC responded in a manner that resonated with the British public – posting a full-page ad in the Metro with their initials rearranged to almost form an explicit word. It\u2019s almost as if they were going \u201cFCK, this is embarrassing\u201d, a phrase that struck the bullseye with the British public.<\/span><\/p>\n Underneath, the company apologised for it\u2019s failure, promising to do better in the future. KFC\u2019s ability to laugh at itself took classic British humor, owning up to their mistake, and an appropriate form of advertisement to create one of the best responses to a PR crisis in the last decade.<\/span><\/p>\n While a positive customer perception is bound to net you new customers, it can help also drive growth via repeating customers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n By forming long-term, lasting relationships with your customers, you increase loyalty and customer retention rates.<\/span><\/p>\n Focusing on metrics such as these is key in ecommerce, as it\u2019s considered much cheaper to retain existing customers than attract new ones.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Customers who have already purchased from you, and have built a positive relationship with you, are far easier to convince to purchase again than those who haven\u2019t. To attract new customers, you need to:<\/span><\/p>\n You skip the first three steps with existing customers, making it a much more efficient and cheaper affair.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The key to customer retention is to align with their values and beliefs. This will depend on your market, who your customers are, and what demographics your customers belong to.<\/span><\/p>\n Older generations emphasize different things than younger ones, men on different factors than women. These are all generalizations, of course, and won\u2019t hold for every customer of that particular demographic, but it\u2019s important to keep them in mind.<\/span><\/p>\n Customer perception has two particular factors which promote strong loyalty and even advocacy:<\/span><\/p>\n A customer who perceives your brand as having the same values as them will <\/span>intrinsically align<\/span><\/a> themselves with you. Conversely, a brand with lacking or conflicting values will see customers migrate away to greener pastures.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The same <\/span>Ipsos Global Trends Report 2021<\/span><\/a> also found that consumers’ three most common expectations of brands are:<\/span><\/p>\n This is true worldwide, with the report looking at all six continents.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Businesses that are perceived to have outdated or harmful business practices will be met with rejection and even protest, while those who keep an eye on the values their customers hold will be embraced.<\/span><\/p>\n But it\u2019s not enough to talk the talk. You also have to walk the walk, with actions speaking much louder than words. Shallow and meaningless gestures will be seen through, yet genuine commitment will be <\/span>held in high esteem<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Microsoft is an interesting example of a company that shifted its value to keep up with the times. Historically, it was known as a combative and aggressive company. But with the appointment of Satya Nadella as CEO in 2014, it shifted towards more collaborative tactics.<\/span><\/p>\n The software giant now <\/span>provides support<\/span><\/a> for open-source software, PaaS, and IaaS solutions and, in general, is far more open to working with other developers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Good customer perception signals to the consumer base that you are a trustworthy brand that will not lie, misdirect or cheat customers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n To build and maintain trust, the best practice is simply to be trustworthy, to say what you mean, and to be honest and open about your business practices.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Costa Brazil, for instance, laid out their <\/span>Roadmap For Change<\/span><\/a> earlier this year, stating their sustainability targets and their pledge to plant new trees to replace those their products required.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Unlike similar press releases and statements from similar companies which only showed the positive, they were open and honest about the difficulties of building a sustainable brand and admitted that they weren\u2019t experts in the field. Many other businesses switching to eco-friendly means of production haven\u2019t been willing to admit difficulties, leaving Costa Brazil as one of the few who will publically acknowledge setbacks.<\/span><\/p>\n At the end of the day, customer perception is about developing positive relationships with customers, which leads to increased sales and success.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n It\u2019s no wonder that past experiences can determine loyalty and retention.<\/span><\/p>\n As we\u2019re all conditioned by our past, our reactions and knowledge are entirely dependent upon our previous experiences. In this way, good customer perception relies on having consistent good experiences.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A well-known phenomenon is hyper focus on particularly good or bad parts of an experience with a brand, with one <\/span>bad experience<\/span><\/a> tainting a person\u2019s perception of that brand as a whole.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Thus, consistency is key in building good customer perception.<\/span><\/p>\n We briefly talked about the ways you can measure the elusive customer perception. Now\u2019s the time to dive deeper.<\/span><\/p>\n It isn\u2019t easy to keep track of all the factors that affect customer perception, but with a little investigation, you can usually find out what customers expect of you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Using one method of information gathering alone will usually get you part of the story, but not all of it. For example, reviews, by their nature, are only left by those who have purchased from you. Thanks to the human tendency to only leave reviews in the case of particularly strong experiences, whether positive or negative, you\u2019ll tend to get a skewed view of things.<\/span><\/p>\n You need to use multiple methods of data collection if you want to get the complete picture. That means complementing review data with other methods such as surveys and social media monitoring.<\/span><\/p>\n Surveys are great, as they can tell you the little details that you specifically need to know. You can ask the specific questions you want answered, and those who complete your survey will give you the answers. Sounds simple enough, right?<\/span><\/p>\n In reality, things aren\u2019t so simple. Consumers tend to only answer surveys when they\u2019re particularly motivated to do so.<\/span><\/p>\n A popular motivational tool is a monetary incentive. While it will get people to answer your questions, some may simply tick boxes randomly to obtain the reward.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n That being said, you can somewhat overcome this by placing reverse-scale questions, helping you to weed out such responders.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For example, if marking 5 means an excellent experience in most of your questions, create an item where marking 5 means a terrible one. In surveys where all items are marked with 5, you\u2019ll know people didn\u2019t bother reading the question, and you can disregard their answers.<\/span><\/p>\n Another issue with surveys is they\u2019re usually limited to your clients. Would you look at an email from a company you have never interacted with directly and think, <\/span>\u201cI\u2019m going to complete this survey!\u201d<\/span><\/i>?<\/span><\/p>\n Finally, only people interested in answering questions will complete your survey. The issue is that your sample is limited to a specific subset of people that don\u2019t necessarily depict your entire audience.<\/span><\/p>\n That said, surveys are still a great tool to gauge customer perception. You just need to keep their limitations in mind.<\/span><\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve opted for one, it\u2019s important to know how to read them and what you can get out of them.<\/span><\/p>\n The <\/span>net promoter score<\/span><\/a> is a value that\u2019s based on a specific survey question:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOn a scale of 1 (very unlikely) to 10 (very likely), how likely is it that you would recommend us to someone else?\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Those who answered 9 or 10 are considered \u201cpromoters\u201d of your brand, whereas 0-6 denotes a \u201cdetractor,\u201d those who will decry you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The relative ratios of these will give you an idea of how well your product or service is received and help quantify your overall customer perception.<\/span><\/p>\n Similarly, the customer effort score is based on the question:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOn a scale of 1 (extremely low effort) to 5 (extremely high effort), how difficult was it for you to find a solution to your problem with us?\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n The CES measures the effort that customers feel like they have to go to in order to get what they want from you, which is a crucial component in a customer having a good experience with you and therefore having a good perception of you.<\/span><\/p>\n Review data is solid. It\u2019s information on your products or services provided by those who purchased from you and therefore is a reliable data source, right?<\/span><\/p>\n Well, not exactly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n First, you have to consider that you\u2019ll get a skewed perspective from reviews thanks to people\u2019s tendency to only leave them after standout experiences.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve come across review STAR ratings online and seen a lot of 5-star and 1-star reviews, but not very many in between.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Secondly, reviews can be faked. Whether that\u2019s by competitors, the platform you\u2019re using to sell on, or by people who have nothing better to do than make everyone else\u2019s life difficult, you can\u2019t necessarily rely on review data that isn\u2019t directly linked to a purchase.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The problem then comes that, by only taking into account verified reviews, you might leave out plenty of genuine reviews that simply didn\u2019t bother going through the verification process.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n With Revuze\u2019s data collection engines, you can take information in brands, product lines and even individual products, analysing them from every angle in order to pull as much information as you can from that data.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We use sentiment analysis, SWOT analysis, and more to give you a full 360 degree view of your brand, market standing, and competitors.<\/span><\/p>\n With the advent of the internet, the things people talk about daily suddenly became recorded and <\/span>publicly available<\/span><\/a> to analyze.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhat is customer perception?<\/b><\/h2>\n
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What is the customer perception process?<\/b><\/h2>\n
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Why is customer perception important?<\/b><\/h2>\n
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Value alignment<\/b><\/h3>\n
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Trust<\/b><\/h3>\n
Past experiences<\/b><\/h3>\n
How to determine & measure customer perception<\/b><\/h2>\n
Collecting feedback via surveys<\/b><\/h3>\n
Net Promoter Score (NPS)<\/b><\/h4>\n
Customer Effort Score (CES)<\/b><\/h4>\n
Analyzing review data<\/b><\/h3>\n
Social media listening<\/b><\/h3>\n