Importance of building trust relationships

Mr. Company how can I trust you when you lie to me?

I recently had a scheduled appointment with a representative from one of my service providers. Further – it was an initial assessment and I hadn’t even handed over any money yet. After waiting for 20 mins (too long) in the waiting area I decided to call him and find out where he was. I was presented with a ridiculous lie. Details unimportant but if only he had told the truth and said “I got caught up” or “I’m so sorry I completely forgot how can I make this up to”.

This silly lie cost him and his company my trust and my business.

Having recently read the SAS Institute Inc’s ‘2009 Customer Experience Maturity Monitor’, this got me thinking about the importance of building trust relationships with customers. The SAS Institute Inc. sum up this concept nicely and say that “a customer’s trust is a belief that the company has her and his best interests at heart and can be depended upon for respect, openness, tolerance and honesty”.

What a fabulous philosophy for companies to use?

This article also describes the gap between how companies think they behave towards trust and how they actually behave. --- I think a key problem in developing customer centricity.

We are all human and we can all make mistakes but this can be overcome with a simple philosophy of respect, openness, tolerance and honesty.