Toronto, ON/November 13, 2008: Tumbling stock markets mirror the waning trust many investors have in corporations today.  Such feeling is not unjustified.  Bank failures, the listeriosis crisis at Maple Leaf Foods, the demise of Lehman Brothers, the ABCP fiasco and the global financial crisis have given everybody reason to be worried and to wonder whom to listen to.

The question that firms lifting themselves out of the market rubble must answer if they are to inspire confidence is: How can we win back the trust of customers and investors, and rebuild our business?

The task is not an impossible one.  We only need to think back to the infamous 1982 Tylenol tampering scare in which bottles of Tylenol were laced with cyanide.  Rather than think of the financial implications, the company came forward with full disclosure and an immediate recall of all 31 million bottles of product.  Johnson and Johnson were completely open with the media and with the public.  They were able to regain trust.

What should companies do to regain lost trust?  First of all, make sure your own house is in order.  Do you know whether your customers trust you?  It is necessary but not sufficient to simply ask a question about customer satisfaction or loyalty in a survey.

First, customer satisfaction is a rear-view perspective.  It asks an existing customer how they found your service after they have completed their transaction with you.  Further, it doesn't speak to whether they intend to return in the future and it certainly doesn't not speak to the unhappy, dissatisfied or cynical customers whose business you will never know you lost or never had an opportunity to have.

Loyalty questions begin to get closer to issues of trust but they do not tell you what the person is loyal to.  Often, the customer is loyal to their adviser or banker but not necessarily to the institution.  Employees move on, you need to own the long-term customer loyalty.  To do that, you need to understand what underlies loyalty.

Loyalty can be an outcome of trust, but isn't always.  Trust is the most fundamental value but to truly grasp it, you need to break trust down into its component parts.  Only then can you systematically grow and build back trust. To simply ask the “trust” question doesn't provide in-depth actionable information.  Trust is a nuanced concept and we need to understand what the respondent means when they react to a question of trust.

Trust is a complex and multi-dimensional value.  We all think we know what it means when we hear the word trust but it is contextually-based and changes under different circumstances.  The trust in Wall Street changed dramatically after the October crash. Trust is personal and is comprised of both attitudes and behaviors.  Most don't believe in stealing but rationalize downloading music without paying.

Given this complexity and customer loyalty stakes, we need to measure and understand trust.  Instruments designed to specifically measure trust will provide you with the best gage of how effective your organization is at building trusting relationships with your customers.

In addition, we need to gage relationships within the organization to consistently create and improve value. Mistrustful employees do not deliver high trust, loyal customers.  It is critical when hiring that you explore the candidate’s most fundamental of values- trust.  Are hiring trustworthy individuals?  How do you know?  Will they perform consistently to organizational trust values?  Trust is a deep-rooted attitude with associated behaviors which take time, conscious development and reinforcement to change.

Right now rebuilding and regaining customer and employee trust is your number one priority.  Avoid marketing messages with more clichés and platitudes—wasted messages which reflect a traditional view of the world but which no longer resonate with your customers.  Product and services marketing will only be effective to the extent that your market believes what you say and your employees act accordingly.

Trust is the foundation of every business.  Without trust you have no possibility of long term success. Your organization's reputation is one of the most critical bottom line issues over which you have direct influence and control. Millions of dollars are spent in projecting an image and reputation which communicates confidence, security, trust, reliability and competence.  It takes years of hard work to achieve a reputation of trust—yet it takes an incredibly short time to lose this investment.  The sooner you begin to repair the damage, the less the impact will be.

Putting together your road map to regain trust is the only rational reaction to these troubling events.  The longer you wait to act, the more difficult a path you will need to follow.

Trust Learning Solutions integrates trust into the strategy and business processes of an organization. Founded in 2007 by Dr. Deborah Nixon, Trust Learning Solutions is a leader in change management, strategy, program evaluation, and employee assessment and recruiting. Trust Learning Solutions is a natural evolution to Dr. Nixon’s 15 year research into trust, culminating in a PhD dissertation about The Role and Meaning of Trust in Financial Institutions.

Contact:
Deborah Nixon, PhD
Trust Learning Solutions
Research and Consulting Services
704 Windermere Ave
Toronto Ontario M6S 3M1
Ph: 416-763-6985

www.trustlearningsolutions.com