When it comes to making high-consideration purchases, customers often get lost in the endless number of choices. When they’re purchasing a big-ticket item like an automobile, an appliance, flooring, or other home improvement items, competing products often look the same and tout similar features and benefits.
These expensive purchases aren’t everyday ones for most consumers, so they might be unfamiliar with the brands, the products, or the market in general. The stress of researching a new product, compounded with customers knowing they are about to spend a lot of money on an unfamiliar purchase, leaves an opportunity for savvy brands to win these customers over.
Using Customer Frustration to Your Advantage
Customer confusion results in the perfect opportunity for a business to win consumers over. Consumers need information, assistance, and a brand that can alleviate their fears with simplified messaging and a simple purchase process.
Companies can embrace this confusion and use it as an opportunity to build brand loyalty by creating a customer experience that eases stress. The key is to understand what the customer needs at each step of the process — from the initial online interaction to the showroom experience.
When researching product information, decision simplicity is an important element. The easier it is for a customer to find trustworthy information about a product and brand, weigh the options, and make a decision, the more likely that person is to refer the product and return for further purchases.
Confusion and too many options can result in a negative customer experience and brand association, so brands and their partners need to help customers feel confident about their purchasing decision. This especially holds true with expensive items like lighting, flooring, window treatments, consumer electronics, furniture, and power equipment. But regardless of the industry, this heightened focus on easing customer confusion will translate into brand loyalty.
Tackling Customer Confusion
There are many ways you can ease consumer frustration and confusion. Here are a few you can start with:
1. Focus on the experience. To drive home the main point here, brands need to align with customer needs. This means equipping all stakeholders in the value chain to focus on the experience over touting the greatness of the product. The experience isn’t just about the display; it’s about every single touch-point with a customer. So you need to establish standards for customer treatment at every stage of the customer journey.
2. Shift the messaging. Products don’t build customer loyalty; the brand does. Instead of selling a product to customers, drive a branded experience that connects with them. Make sure your marketing doesn’t simply showcase the product features but rather shows how the brand aligns with the customer’s value and lifestyle.
3. Offer consistency. Brand alignment doesn’t mean that the customer needs to hear the same messaging in every company interaction; it means that the messaging needs to be consistent. Translate marketing messages into experiences that are consistent with your overall brand story.
Customer confusion doesn’t have to be a part of the purchase process. To achieve loyalty, educate customers and deliver consistent brand marketing campaigns that make the purchase process a no-brainer.
