No Trust, No Sales in Financial Industry

The question of trust comes into the picture much more strongly in the prepaid card industry than in most other verticals.   Its direct impact on sales results is immense and addressing it strongly will be a key pillar in the battle to win new customers.

So what are the dimensions of trust for a prepaid card prospect?

• Company: We’re talking about handling people’s money and moving it internationally (in some cases).  The strength of your company and its affiliations to known banking players is a key dimension

• Support: Most people have some experience with banking and card products and they have experienced challenges at some time or another.  The critical factor for them has been the level of support they have gotten from the company when the problem did arise.
• Fees: Hidden or surprise fees are an accepted fact of financial services products and the assumption among buyers is that the “price is not the price”.  The question is: how bad will the hidden fees be?
• Ease of Use: An often used benefit of prepaid cards is the significant convenience gain as compared to conventional money transfer products.   The buying public is justifiably skeptical of such claims having fallen prey to other services which promise a better experience but instead replace one weak spot with another.

Building Confidence in Context

The trust question which arises in a potential customer’s mind is not all encompassing.  Usually, the focus on trust lies in several critical subareas of the overall buying criteria for the customer.  A couple of examples will convey the idea more quickly:

Example 1: International Money Transfer

A resident of the U.S. sends money regularly to his brother in Europe to help in the early stages of setting up a new business.  Until now, he has been sending the money via a bank and has been frustrated with several aspects of the service.  The issue which is foremost on his mind is the unreliable delivery times of international money transfers.  He wants to get the money to his brother on a regular schedule.  Everytime he gets paid on the 31st of the month, he wants to send his brother the money for the office rent by the 2nd of the month.

A prepaid card company promises faster delivery (within 24 hrs via direct credit to a prepaid card account).   He’s interested in this benefit but has heard similar claims from his current bank provider also.   The trust challenge in this case is to create confidence in the fulfillment of promised benefits.

Example 2: Parents Funding College Student

When parents send their kids off to college, the challenge of providing support while maintaining spending control is  always a big one.   The promised benefit of prepaid cards is the ability to rapidly and regularly provide money to your child at college.    This confidence is required to displace less convenient but know systems like regular bank account deposits.

In this context, the key factor is rapid availability of funds.  A potential customer (parent) will look for reasons to have confidence in your claims of instant or rapid availability of funds.

Understanding and Adapting to Buyer Context in Building Trust

Total trust and confidence is a loftygoal which is neither possible or required to achieve for most companies.  Experience has show that buyer confidence in prepaid card companies is based upon each individuals hierarchy of needs from the prepaid card product.   Context is created by the unique combination of needs / pains of a specific subset of customers.   Before seeking to address the trust issue, it is important to understand the context and where to focus your trust building efforts.

AftertheNet pushes clients to treat their website the same way as their “real world” sales pitch.  While everyone recognizes that a website is not the exact same as a personal call or meeting, a lot of the same rules apply.   If  you expect your website to provide you strong leads, it needs to create trust among potential buyers that you can deliver whats important to them.

Your most precious resource in any marketing situation is customer attention.  With the goal of saving time, a prospect will only give you a limited amount of time to deliver enough information to convince them your prepaid card is valuable to them and that they can trust you to deliver as promised.   If your website doesn’t pass the early relevancy test, you won’t get the chance to deliver your whole sales pitch.

Focus your efforts in trust building on the context and segment that each part of your website is focused on.  Too wide an effort will dilute your message and cost you the prospect.    Any new purchase from a company has a certain amount of risk and buyers recognize that.   Companies need to meet a minimum standard of relevant confidence and trust with a new buyer to get them to absorb the risk of dealing with a company which is unknown to them.

The Web Strategy Company will continue to publish this ongoing series of articles about how Prepaid Card companies can achieve a higher level of sales results.   Stay tuned for more articles in the series.