CUSTOMER THINK: THE CUSTOMER CONFIDENCE CRISIS - WHY NOW IS THE TIME TO REBUILD YOUR CUSTOMERS’ TRUST
Customer Think’s Nick Wassenberg suggests taking some time to rebuild your customers’ trust in you with four simple steps.
Over the past few weeks, the media has been buzzing about the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer study (details here). It measures and reports the level of trust the general public has in entities like corporations, government, even friends and family. Some of the results are unexpected, such as the rise globally in the credibility people see in messages directly from the CEO and the lack of trust people have in their “inner circle” social network.
Some have critiqued the study, others have praised it, but it’s hard to deny the fact that the last two years have shaken the public’s trust in business leaders, especially in the financial services, automotive, and aerospace industries.
Not surprisingly, this breakdown of trust has also happened in business-to-business relationships. Organizations worldwide are doing more with less. Fewer resources often leads to declines in quality and delivery performance as well as less interaction with key customers.
The end result? Less trust.
And, of course, in business-to-business relationships trust is critical to loyalty, growth, and profitability. When channel partners, distributors, or OEMs can’t trust their suppliers to provide the products and services they need to meet the needs of the end user, both the bottom line and the future relationship suffer.
If your customers have lost some of their trust, the business impact – in both the short and long term – is significant. So how do you build (or rebuild) customers’ trust?
In the work we do with our clients, it happens in four steps…