Understanding Customer Needs and Expectations
It seems like people love to throw about the phrase 'the customer is usually always right', and yet so few brands appear to have a clue what their customers want. It seems like many of them don't even try to find out. It's not exactly uncommon for designers and developers to make up entire customer journeys based on vague ideas they have in their heads.
The reality is that getting to know your customers is a fairly tricky thing, and certainly not a one-size-fits-all sort of exercise. There are sort of often several types of people using your products - some are loyal, others are casual, and some might be using your platform because they're forced to. Trying to cater to every single person's needs is a fairly challenging task, especially when you work with massive organisations that have hundreds of thousands of users across several continents.
It usually boils down to analysing broad data sets about how users interact with your product, and then combining it with smaller focus groups of actual users who can tell you if any of that analysis matches what they're experiencing.
And then you repeat this all over again every time something changes. It's an imperfect system but it's certainly far better than making things up as you go along. Taking the time to get this right will ensure you're well on your way to building trust with your customers, mainly because you're taking the time out to pay attention and listen.
It shows that you genuinely care about them having a good experience instead of treating everyone the same without consideration for their varied needs or circumstances.
Designing for Accessibility and Inclusivity
One thing people get wrong about digital inclusivity is thinking it’s only about colour contrast, font size, and those more visible accessibility features. The way I see it, they tick the boxes on a checklist and move on, thinking their product is ready for everyone. While those are important, it’s about so much more than that.
Sometimes it does feel like a loaded phrase - designing for accessibility and inclusivity. You wonder if you’re doing enough or perhaps missing out on something crucial. There’s a certain guilt that comes with wondering if you’re unintentionally excluding someone, but the key is in acknowledging that feeling and trying to do your best anyway.
Most people think it’s easy to pull off with just a couple of sessions of user testing and some online research, but the truth is that it takes time to build up a truly accessible system. Accessibility isn’t just about visual impairments - there are people with hearing disabilities, cognitive difficulties, limited language proficiency, physical challenges and more who want to use your product too. So design with them in mind as well.
Voice overs and screen readers help. Good contrast and customisable font sizes do too. But when you go beyond this realm of accessibility into inclusivity - you need to think about a whole different set of needs. Be mindful of gender-neutral terms, cultural cues that may be missed by some people (or even offend others), audio signals for when text isn’t clear or clear messaging when audio isn’t available in your experience - all these are important to consider here as well.
Being aware of an international audience can help with this as well as learning from products that exist in other markets than yours where perhaps different groups may be more dominant than they are arguably among your user base at the moment. Truly inclusive experiences acknowledge that not everyone experiences the world in the same way you do as a designer or product owner (or even just most users). By being flexible and accommodating many preferences without making people feel singled out for having them - your product becomes an open space for ideas from many perspectives…where new users will feel welcomed no matter what their experience has been so far elsewhere.
Implementing Transparent Communication Strategies
People think transparency means laying every last thing out on the table. When we tell people to be transparent, they imagine lengthy disclaimers and PDF files full of T&Cs. Suggests That but that’s not quite it - and who even has time for that much reading anymore.
Most people don’t have the patience to go through so much detail. And that’s where businesses get transparency wrong. Transparency is about being honest and upfront with your customers about their expectations - especially when things don’t go as planned.
We know it can get a bit tricky for some companies to share this information because it makes them feel vulnerable. But there’s a lot of power in vulnerability, because it means you’re human and willing to build more trust. Transparency can mean setting up multiple communication channels (both synchronous and asynchronous) so that your customers always know they can reach out to you.
It also means giving them access to their historical data so they always feel in control of their own experiences. And when things do go wrong, which happens more often than we care to admit, being transparent is about providing updates every step of the way. It also includes maintaining a certain level of honesty with customers about what’s happening internally and how you plan on solving their problems. Being transparent isn’t just good for business, it’s what every customer expects from the brands they interact with today.
Of course, it does take some time and effort to set up transparent communications - but once you do, it can go a long way in building customer trust.
Personalization: Tailoring Experiences for Individual Users
People tend to think that personalisation is all about showing users what they like. That sounds simple enough, but then you get stuck with an algorithm that shows you only a sliver of what’s actually available. I’d say most people, while they want something tailored for them, don’t want to be put in a box with their interests limited to one thing. It’s a fine line.
Personalisation is great for some things — like giving users updates about shipping information or reminders when they have left something in the cart. But when the user experience is hardly ever completely dictated by algorithms or personalisation, it might leave out some interesting information that would surprise and delight the user. Personalising content isn’t just based on showing what’s related to interests but also things around it or adjacent that could give a better user experience.
Now, I know this can be quite tricky to figure out since data available about users may be limited. And there are likely aspects where personalisation may go too far and give off an eerie vibe too — such as brands using intrusive data collection practices (not a good look. ).
The way I see it, this is why it needs to be balanced with care. Personalised experiences can go beyond just presenting users with what they want but also how they consume it. It could simply be giving the user options for light or dark mode or accessibility features such as subtitles, voiceovers, font sizes, and so on.
If we lean into the positive side of personalisation while respecting boundaries, we can create engaging experiences that help build trust.
Building a Feedback Loop for Continuous Improvement
Everyone thinks feedback should be a single, one-time event. You ask once, you receive once, and then you move on. But a large part of building a customer-centric experience is generally having constant conversations with your customers and improving your products and services accordingly.
You’re only halfway there if you only ask for feedback once. The remaining half lies in building a continuous process that prioritises transparency, learning, and improvement. A simple way to do this is by establishing a constant rhythm of feedback loops - asking for it regularly, synthesising responses, and documenting changes so customers can see how their feedback has been implemented.
Of course, this isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Creating and implementing a feedback loop sounds great on paper but can be more difficult in practice due to budget or time constraints.
In such cases, starting with small steps can be helpful. Even as something as small as replying to reviews online with an update on how the product is being improved or how the customer’s suggestion is being considered can make a difference. Feedback loops are all about engagement and that looks different for each brand. Sort of.
So start small and scale up until you can establish robust systems that support your entire product lifecycle.
Measuring Trust: Key Metrics and Indicators
It's not uncommon for people to cling to hard numbers, as if trust could be marked down on a scale of 1 to 10, then signed off as 'complete'. This view sort of misses the point, I think. Trust is far less about dashboards and more about daily behaviour than we'd often like to admit. There’s no magical metric that perfectly defines how your customers feel about you - though some marketing teams try their best to sell one.
Still, that doesn’t mean you can't measure the signs where it matters. Your Net Promoter Score or likelihood of referrals can work as proxies, but they're not flawless.
Repeat usage and longer session times could mean you're meeting a need or - and this is critical - that you have a frustratingly confusing user journey or just haven’t made it easy to leave your site (which is not exactly trust). It’s in the subtext: Are people happy with you, or are they stuck with you. Honest written reviews can be helpful here.
Seeing customers take the time to give detail - good, bad or even meh - always says something valuable. But I'd weigh polite complaints over blank five-star reviews any day. There’s more nuance in tracking how quickly people fill out forms or finish sign-ups than is obvious at first glance. It’s tempting to say shorter times mean greater trust, but quick exits often indicate something different altogether.
Where things get sticky: many metrics are highly situation-dependent. A long checkout process could mean thoughtful buying, a complicated form could suggest confusion or high commitment and there isn’t always a clear fix for what looks ‘wrong’ at first glance. Measuring trust will always be messier than just counting click-through rates and returns because trust is heavily influenced by past experiences and future expectations too.
No one number tells the whole truth. Over time, though, you begin to spot positive signals in a pattern of repeat engagement combined with honest feedback and public endorsement. You’ll know your design choices are cultivating confidence when those all start pointing in one direction more than another - upwards rather than downwards.