Do you trust me?
How important is it for your customers to trust you and your business?
When you consider your business interactions with your customers do you ever wonder whether your customer trusts you or not?
If you haven’t yet, now is the right time to consider this important part of your relationship.
Let’s first consider its importance and then consider ways in which you might incorporate the building of trust into your company plans.
Why is trust important?
Consider the costs attached to your business. You have people, products, services all requiring coordination to provide sales and ultimately profit for the business. So where does trust factor in to your expenses? Did you know that trust, or lack of it should we say, is the LARGEST business expense you have?
Without it you have little influence (either with staff or customers), a lack of transactions, loss of profits, loss of business community standing and these are but a few.
How is trust established?
It doesn’t happen all at once. It is an ongoing, progressive journey. There are some critical things that must occur before the relationship with staff or customers is considered trustworthy.
David Horsager, an international business strategist, developed a leadership system designed to teach business leaders how to build trust. We examine his “Eight Pillars of Trust” here.
Image: Eight pillars of trust developed by David Horsager
Each pillar is as important as the next. You may be incredibly competent and up to date with knowledge but completely inconsistent in your approach and therefore not meet customer or staff expectation.
Clarity
People trust clear communication.
People mistrust ambiguous communication.Compassion
People have greater degrees of trust in those that care beyond themselves.Character
Do what is right rather than what is easy.Competency
Stay fresh, relevant and capable and therefore competent.Commitment
People tend to believe in those that remain steadfast through times of difficulty.Connection
People want to be influenced by, buy from and socialise with friends/those they have strong connection with.Contribution
People respond immediately to results.Consistency
People respond well to consistency - an expectation that you will deliver on the big and the little things.
“Trust is like the air we breathe - when it’s present, nobody really notices; when it is absent, everybody notices.”
So what should we be doing?
First up, start involving using the word “trust” in your planning. Ensure it becomes part of your everyday decision-making so that the focus is on taking small steps to achieving big goals as far as trust should be concerned.
Will this decision create more or less trust in our products or services?
How do we incorporate Clarity?
Ask for feedback from staff and/or customers. Does what we propose make sense? What do you think may be missing i.e. is there anything else you would like to see included?
Look at what you are conveying from the listener’s/reader’s perspective BEFORE you send it or phone it through. What would THEY be looking for? What might be open to interpretation? What is missing? Also ask yourself - what would I expect to see if I received this communication?
How do we incorporate Compassion?
There are still businesses that shy aware from using words like trust, compassion and empathy - dismissing them as too emotional, too frilly or not meant for a business environment.
This could not be any further from the reality of us as human beings. We don’t leave ourselves at the front door before we walk in to the office. We have emotions and needs at work very similar compared to those we have at home. I will share a personal experience of the loss of a dear long-term friend - one of my suppliers was looking for me to pay a bill that was 3 days overdue with a Messenger Chat …
“Hey I thought you were paying 7 day terms”
No Hi, no Thank you, no “Would you mind?”, no courtesy whatsoever. The supplier was blissfully unaware of the tragic circumstances my husband and I found ourselves in. BEFORE you click send put yourself in the shoes of the person who will receive it. Is it courteous? Is it respectful of a potentially unknown situation?
Needless to say this supplier no longer supplies us with services. Our lifetime value to them conservatively estimated at $50,700 gross. Remember the cost to acquire business is way more significant to any business than the cost to retain business.
Try and identify those within your team that are empathetic people and draw from them their ideas about how a business can become more compassionate.
A couple of ideas here.
You’ve heard from someone that another client has been admitted to hospital. Something as simple as a card identifying that you are aware and sending them your best wishes for a speedy recovery can go far and be sincerely appreciated.
A staff member has lost a friend or family member tragically - the business might respond with a care package (e.g. easy meals) to acknowledge an often difficult part of the day ensuring nutritional needs, flowers and card, presence at the funeral and reaching out to offer time-off over and above legal requirements and a genuine offer of personal assistance. It’s time like these that people remember the people who acted and the people who didn’t. Let’s not forget the impact your actions will have on other team members also.
How do we incorporate Character?
Think carefully about trying to win. There are plenty of sales people that are happy to nail the deal forgetting or ignoring that because of the contents of the deal it may well be their last.
Create deals that are not a rip-off and can be cost-justified. We all talk about the times we were sucked in or ripped off more than the deals that have sat well with us.
Do what you say you will do to build character. If at any stage this becomes impossible the best option is to confess and make amends or adjustments. Better to do this than be found out down the line at being less than honest about what has been transpired.
How do we incorporate Competency?
This can also be seen as keeping ahead of the competition and adding value to your customer’s knowledge/cost-savings.
Do you build in regular discussion around new or even fringe trends (what’s happening in markets close to us that might affect us in future)?
Do you ensure that your staff has access to new technologies and is given the time to explore them? How is the business adopting technology to remove unnecessary steps for customers in the delivery of your goods and services?
What do you know that can be of value to your customers that you are not sharing? If you are monitoring market information do you share this information with your customers? If not, why not? Set up a company blog that focuses on new ideas, new information, new ways of interacting. The opportunities are endless.
How to we incorporate Commitment?
Scenario - customer needs a job done by x date and that date is immoveable. You experience technical/supply issues that means you will not be able to deliver on the date requested. What would you do? Tell them you can’t deliver the product or find another way to get the job done?
The preference should always be the latter, especially if you value your customer by lifetime value and not simply job to job. But what if the job is set to cost you all the profit you might be making? BEFORE you make that phone call to the customer do the maths, work out what their value to the business is and then work through what can be done without disrupting your customer or, if you have to, work out the best way to advise the customer of any changes. Personally, I would rather lose the margin on one job, learn what to build into the contingency planning for next time, than lose the customer for life.
How do we incorporate Connection?
We don’t need to be buddy buddy with our customers but we do need to understand what makes them tick and how they operate. We get to know our friends from their likes and dislikes and so we should get to know our customer likes and dislikes.
Do they like sports, art, theatre, coffee, travel, food and wine etc.? If you are thinking of entertaining clients do you think of what they might like before committing to cheap and easy tickets to something they will dislike intensely? The former done well is always something they will remember and talk about for a long time with colleagues and friends and family.
How do we incorporate Contribution?
If we do what we say we are going to do then we should report on this to customers and staff. Show results with how, where and what was achieved and offer insight into what was great, what was OK and what didn’t work and why. But don’t just leave it there - work on the not-so-good stuff and report on improvements. Agree a communication plan with your staff and customers and stick to it. Everyone loves a bad news turned good story.
Contribute to ongoing relationship with updates. Be transparent.
How do we incorporate Consistency?
I could write a novel on this (must be close to that already but thanks for staying with me…).
People have expectations longer-term with respect to how others behave or act in certain situations - this is no different in business. Consistency could also be considered as reliability - how reliable is this person in this situation? Can we rely on them to help? How confident am I if I give this person this work that they will deliver?
To cut a long (or longer…) story short, if you promise to deliver work within a certain timeframe then do it to the best of your ability all of the time. If you need to renegotiate timing then go back to the staff member involved or the customer and work out a new date and then be sure to deliver to that new timeframe.
In this way the person on the receiving end will know that you are a good communicator of issues and are looking to resolve it within the new timeframe.
Kiri Lander
10 July 2023