Part 2: Trust, the currency of experience

In Part 1: Trust, The Currency of Experience, we explored the importance of trust, how it may be defined and the roles and responsibilities the executive leadership of an organisation may need to consider for successfully gaining and maintaining trust. Below, we look at the building of trust through relationships and the journey it takes for organisations to do so.

The journey of trust

Trust is a journey – a relationship – so while a yearly survey measuring reputation may give a valuable snapshot of sentiment, it can be reactive with no clarity on what may have led to an increase or decline in reputation. If we were to consider measuring ongoing relationships with our customers, we would have access to key indicators to then manage those relationships in moments that matter and be equipped to quickly address any adverse experience before they manifest into larger issues of trust. And with good relationships, reputation will follow.

For many organisations, the customer’s profile (or relationship) is mostly built on implicit signals such as web or app behaviours, with the explicit information somewhat limited to name, contact details and perhaps some consent and preference flags. The need to provide customers additional control and transparency means we should start to evolve the concept of the ‘consent & preferences’ centre into what we could call a ‘Transparency & Control Centre’. Here, we could begin to centrally manage the customer’s marketing or communication preferences and provide additional self-service tools, such as access requests for portability reasons or regulatory requirements, such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and CDR (Customer Data Right) readiness. Plus, profile level (not just cookie) opt-in/out controls, including AI/ML use. Lastly, transparency tools to help customers understand and appreciate the added value they get when providing their data.

Organisations go through a lot of effort crunching data of all types to better understand their customer and provide the right content path or experience. So, why not simply ask our customers what they care about? The advertising ecosystem has started to adopt this approach. In the public sector, this may be presenting the citizen with which service they may need, such as tax assessment services or disaster recovery support. For FSI, this may be asking about stage of life such as starting a family, first home or small business needs. All the above help to nurture a more symbiotic relationship.

Here may be a good point to touch on the concept of 'Zero Party Data'. This suggests that organisations do not own customer’s personal information, such as name, email etc. Instead, the customer is only sharing their data with an organisation while feeling they are getting the right value exchange. Without that value exchange and appropriate level of trust, customers will inevitably move to another brand or organisation, taking their business (and data) with them. We saw this come to fruition with GDPR's (General Data Protection Regulation) right to access and right to be forgotten, i.e. deletion of customer data. And with data portability requirements or more specific examples such as Customer Data Right (CDR) mandates being introduced into the Australian banking sector (with plans to next move into other sectors of the economy over time), the ease in which customers will be able to control and restrict data – not to mention the opportunities this then provides other niche competitors in market – will only scale with time.

The measurement of trust

There is much to cover on measuring trust, but here are four areas of consideration:

• Consider moving away from just measuring reputation and consider moving toward measuring relationships. As mentioned above, good relationships foster great reputation along with the added benefits of a deeper understanding of the moments that matter.
• A variety of metrics and methods may be applicable to capture trust measurements for your organisation, including activity-based (quantitative), outcome-based (qualitative) and attitude-based (e.g. surveying), so consider your measurement strategy and keep in mind the dimensions of trust, above.
• Trust is a journey with progress measured over time, so consider an 'always on' program of measuring trust. This does not negate or undermine any yearly and/or specific one-off initiatives, instead becomes a welcomed addition to the program.
• Insights are great, but make sure they are actionable and have a clear path to adjust the 'levers' if metrics are going in the wrong direction.

The tools of trust

In Part 1: Trust, The Currency of Experience, we explored the importance of trust, how it may be defined and the roles and responsibilities the executive leadership of an organisation may need to consider for successfully gaining and maintaining trust. In this post, we looked at the importance of building relationships and the journey it takes, so now let’s move to Part 3 of this series to explore the capabilities and tools required to deliver on the mandate of trust.