Trust is essential for the success of any business and lost trust can prove to be disastrous to the business. At the same time, an increase in trust can have a multiplier effect on the company’s fortunes. Customers who trust the brand are more likely to buy the brand again as well as recommend the brand to their friends, family and associates. Internally, employees who trust their employers are likely to be more motivated to work and less likely to leave the organisation.
Let us examine how companies can understand and enhance trust to drive growth.
The first step would be to understand how the user, customer, stakeholders suppliers, as well as employees, view the business in terms of how trustworthy the organisation is. this survey can also be a useful tool to boost customer loyalty. The connection between loyalty and trust is intuitive and every research has shown a strong correlation between trust and loyalty. The more the customers trust the organisation the more loyal they are likely to be. This naturally leads to the hypothesis that organisations can increase customer loyalty through specific measures that enhance trust.
The TrustID survey
TrustID is a platform developed by the authors to measure and increase trust. Trust can be defined as a promise of a beneficial relationship between the organisation and its stakeholders. Trust is built when an organisation makes a promise and delivers on it. This indicates that the organisation has positive intent and competence to deliver the same.
The foundations of trust are intent and competence which can be further broken down into humanity and transparency, capability and reliability.
TrustID survey asks respondents to grade an organisation on a seven-point scale to gauge the performance of the organisation on these four factors.
When a company can move the humanity score too high, the customers are more likely to promote the company on social media and defend it against criticism. SO also customers who rate the company high on transparency are likely to promote them on social media. When the company scores high on capability customers are more likely to choose it over the competition and when they consider the brand as reliable they are more likely to spend more on the brand.
Loyalty connection.
Loyalty is built on the foundation of trust. TrustID survey and analysis would help understand the customer’s pain points and predict what actions will create trust and loyalty. Once the action plan is decided, companies need to reassure the customer and back it with actions and make special efforts to reassure the customers to regain their trust.
Building trust is necessary to promote a satisfactory human experience as these are the types of companies that employees would be glad to belong to and be seen with. Improving the employees’ trust in the organisation can help leaders restore trust across society as a whole.
4 Questions to Measure — and Boost — Customer Trust
by Ashley Reichheld and Amelia Dunlop
HBR 2022/11
R2G 