We take trust for granted.
Many years ago, I moved into an apartment with a landlord who lived on site. It was a short term rental arrangement, and I thought I had the basics spelled out in the agreement. But even though basic things like the cost of rent and the terms of taking out the trash were specified, I found to my dismay that there still were many assumptions with the agreement and ways that this landlord could make my life rough. Even the best contracts require trust because it is impossible to spell out every scenario and area where someone might take advantage of you.
This is no less true for business interactions. Trust does more than grease transactions; it is an essential component of almost any interaction, business or otherwise.
When we buy a product or service, certain terms are spelled out: the cost of the product or service, what it is expected to provide, and a few other things. But even when there is a warranty on a product, for instance, there still is the trust that a reasonable product failure will be honored by the warranty. Or that even though there is not explicit warranty on a product, we expect the product not to fail after its first use.
In all but the most sketchy curbside buys, we assume some level of trust when we make a purchase.
“Trust is the foundation of any thriving business,” acknowledged a recent Broadconnect Telecom blog post. “Without trust, customers have no vested interest in using a product or service. Oftentimes, it is trust that can pull a customer relationship through any problems with a service or product. In any successful business, trust also acts as the basis for customer support.”
We trust that if there is a problem, the company will fix it. While we may be surprised that a product or service underperforms our expectations, we pretty much always make the assumption that we should trust the company to at least honor its definition of what the product or service should do. To not provide customer support for the product is to break this trust, because it gives us no way to hold the business accountable.
The absence of a way to clearly communicate with a business seriously dents our trust, and we may be fooled once but we won’t be fooled twice if we buy from a company and discover there is no support when something goes wrong.
“If a company offers a product or service at a non-throwaway price, and does not provide customer support, it is only a matter of time until an unsatisfied customer makes themselves heard,” noted the BroadConnect blog post. “It is prudent to build the foundations of your business in trust and customer service.”
It also is profitable, since this trust is what breeds word of mouth—and that in turn is increasingly what drives sales. Nielsen has reported that 84 percent of global consumers believe recommendations from friends and family are the most trustworthy sources of information about products, which is up from 78 percent in 2007.
With so many businesses found online, there is less ability for us to know if we can trust a business. Which is why we are more attuned now to recommendations. And these recommendations only come when there is trust.
We as consumers take trust for granted. Businesses cannot, however; they must recognize the need for trust and supply it through a commitment to their products and through customer service that supports this commitment.
Edited by Alisen Downey