Trust me on this

Trust is a central part of all human relationships including romantic partnerships, family life, business operations, politics, and medical practices. If you don’t trust your doctor or psychotherapist, for example, it is much harder to benefit from their professional advice.

Trust is often believed to be the result of objective judgement. F.e. has this business partner ever neglected to deliver?; What is this supplier’s quality track record?; Do others trust this company? (is client advocacy good or bad?); How long has this company been around?; Does this online shop have a trustworthy appearance? (Real, official, includes customer feedback?)…

In other words: rational elements should define trustworthiness.

In truth trust is rather irrational, much like an emotion.

In classic psychological terms, trust is considered to be an element or part of emotions. Experts like Ekman, LeDoux and Tompkins define emotions such as happiness; sadness; surprise; rage; fear; shame; joy; anguish or anticipation and acceptance. In regards to relationships, let’s say customer-vendor relationships, the lack of confidence and belief combines feelings of insecurity and egotism. The ability to feel confident is based on safety and acceptance. The emotion-fueled concept called ‚trustworthiness‘.

Customer behavior research studies consistently show that elements of vendor trust are significant drivers of loyalty and disloyalty, advocacy and alienation, bonding and rejection.

Trust plays an important role in key parts of the customer life cycle: selection, loyalty and defection.

Trust is an emotion that works transactionally: trust is gives when it is received. (Emotional elements of trust work the same: it’s easier to accept someone that you feel accepted by).

So:

-Trust isn’t rational but emotional

-Trust plays a significant role in customer loyalty

-Trust is given when it is received

Two examples of trust working out for better or worse in real customer-vendor life:

For better…

A good friend of Open & Company owns a beautiful villa that he rents out to guests who want to enjoy pure luxury away from home.

It’s… expensive, quite expensive. But it IS also truly beautiful and luxurious. High up in the mountains overlooking a wide-stretched lake. The exterior and interior are like out of a magazine. And that’s no lie. It has featured in several luxury real-estate and holiday magazines.

All the utilities in the house’ bathrooms, kitchens and pool bbq area are of the best and finest quality. Okay maybe except for the water glasses which at first were of an acceptable quality. Glass, nice, nothing special.

Whenever a glass would break during rental it would be thrown away without a notice of the mishap. This resulted in annoyance with the owner for having to find out; annoyance with the next renters for not having a sufficient amount of water glasses; and for the less careful renters for getting the price of the glasses deducted from their deposit and having the feeling of ‚getting caught‘ for their untrustworthy behavior.

Then the owner did something against common sense: he changed all the glasses from wine- to water glasses to crystal glasses. High-end, expensive crystal glasses. Basically saying „Dear renter, I trust you with these glasses“.

Glasses still broke, obviously. But this time, without exception, when a glass broke there was a note or email from the renters after their departure saying „we’re so sorry for braking a glass. Please deduct it from our deposit.

The result was a happy owner for receiving back the trust that he gave; happy new renters for having sufficient glasses; and most importantly happy renters for being trusted with crystal glasses and having owned up for their mishap in all honesty and trustworthiness, giving back what they received. Trust.

For worse…

Summer’s coming so we’re buying some seasonal home decorations at a hip and ‚in‘ home-deco store on the Main Street. Both the staff and the pricing reflect the hipness and ‚in-ness‘ of the store and its products. In other words: it’s cool… and expensive. Still though: the experience is above expectation. The products for sale are really top-notch, original and prime quality; staff is friendly and forthcoming; the store is clean and smells awesome. (what is it with these stores that smell so nice?!)

Just strolling about the store gives real pleasure and finding the decoration gems we were looking for (and more…) tops off an altogether pleasant retail shopping experience. The bought items are gift wrapped although they’re not gifts.. („They are gifts for yourself“ notes the friendly cashier with a smile and a wink). We feel great: welcomed; fulfilled; accepted; appreciated. We don’t even mind getting rid (almost robbed) of quite a large part of this months budget.

Walking out the door we look forward to a well deserved post-shopping coffee.

Hold the coffee! ALARM, FRIGHT and MORE ALARM… Literally alarming!: Crossing the store’s threshold all kinds of bells and whistles start screaming and blaring. A store ‚officer‘ runs towards us with a stare demanding our halt. (For some reason he has one hand on his belt although there’s no actual firearm… but it still feels threatening). Upon reaching us the officer’s demanding stare turns into a questioning stare. Almost saying „Really?, you?!…“ We’re being escorted to the counter all the way across store for inspection of our bags, all the while closely monitored by all staff and the entire clientele of the store who are keen to mirror the officer’s questioning stare.

We feel disgusting. And disgusted to be honest. Just moments ago we were judged as welcome trustworthy customers, accepted into the world of glamorous home deco, as we feel we deserve to be accepted, and only moments later the trust and our acceptance reveal themselves to be fake gloss. Our trust in this brand’s upright and honest acceptance of their customers: shattered.

Our bags were fine by the way. Everything paid for. All but one hidden security-tag-thingy ‚not de-alarmed‘.

If you want to trust your customers. Give them that trust. They will trust you back. If you don’t: please for everybody’s sake at least make sure your ‚security‘ system works faultlessly.

Oh and by the way: research shows that investments in ‚security‘ measures in stores cost more than ‚loss of property‘. And these calculations did not include the loss of falsely ‚accused‘, mistrusted customers.

On top of that this nasty occurrence marks the end of our experience. As we’ve learned in our article about the Peak-End Rule, this leaves a big negative mark on the memory of our otherwise rather pleasing experience. A lasting memory impacting our loyalty.