Customer trust is too serious to leave it to marketing and sales

Interesting post on Trusted Advisor Associates > Trust Matters

• 1. The best trust isn’t very transferable


• 2. Deep digital trust is a tradeoff for breadth; trusting you to sell me a book doesn't mean I'll introduce you to my daughter


• 3. Saying “I’m trustworthy” means you aren’t


• 4. As in the meatosphere, all is not what it seems.

It strikes me that many people think about trust within the framework of a market economy, like something you can build in a client-supplier framework. I don't see the people I trust as clients or suppliers. I think that building trust is precisely about trying to get out of the typical client-supplier relationship, even if in the end you cannot, because your level of trust doesn't go as far as to let your customer decide whether she is going to pay you or not. Some emphasize the need for "customer attitude", claiming that all employees of a company should be focused on the customer's satisfaction to the point of obsession. "Take care of the customer, and the rest will take care of itself". Yeah. Right.

Now, it really depends on the kind of obsession you are talking about. To me obsession, unlike love or friendship, is a kind of disease. If your "obsession" is really about making your numbers, your customer will hear it loud and clear no matter what. When a salesman is after your wallet, you can feel it, and you come to hate this sales person for the rest of your life. I still hate that SOB from Lawless Inc. in Woburn, MA. who took advantage of me as a French expatriate and sold me my new car back in August 1998.

Building trust with your customer is about showing respect for her, both through your competence and through your benevolence. It only can happen if you are convinced in your heart that the sale ends when your customer's job is done, not when you close the deal.

Competence is deep knowledge of your business. Benevolence is consistently walking the extra mile for your customer, when nobody -not even your boss- expects you to do so. It could be surprising that so few companies are truly concerened by the trust of their customers. How many actually engage their employees into a consistent and high level learning experience about the business? How many allow their employees to build personal relationships with the customers? Art Kleiner gave an reason for that. In a company, he says, who really matters is not so much the customer but the core group of company leaders. Earning the trust of customers will not serve your career as much as earning the trust company leaders. The two can sometimes be correlated, especially when there is a major crisis taking place. But oftentimes - especially in large companies - they are not, because of politics. Read Dilbert.

[Thanks Dominique]