My company: Whisperlabs offers a hosted software which makes it easy for customers and prospects to submit product and feature ideas and then vote which are the best ideas. The primary benefit (other than making this process extremely easy to manage) is that it allows companies to see what they can focus their efforts on while managing customer expectations.
In the process of previewing the functionality, I’ve had a number of conversations where the principle point of concern comes down to trust: Is safe to provide transparency into development priorities and invite participation in voting on the priorities?
I can’t help but pose this question:
If you can’t trust to your customers, how can you expect your customers to trust you?
According to Merriam Webster’s online, trust evolved from my Scandinavian forefathers and essentially means “one in which confidence is placed.” Granted, there are a number of potential definitions which can be used, however, wikipedia does a decent job at expanding on this concept in their description of trust as a social science. The entry stars with the following:
Trust is a relationship of reliance. A trusted party is presumed to seek to fulfill policies, ethical codes, law and their previous promises.
It later continues with the following:
trust is essential as Social institutions (governments), economies, and communities require trust to function. Therefore trust and altruism are areas of study for economists, although these concepts go beyond strict rational economics.
Trust is essential for companies and customers to function. As a consumer of a product, I must trust that the maker of this product will not harm me. I must trust that the product lives up to the marketing claims that were made (at least, within a degree of expectation). If my trust falters, I will cease to use the product.
Additionally, I’ll go as far as saying that when it is obvious that I am not trusted as a customer, then my trust in the company starts to falter. When my trust starts to falter, it casts a halo (or in this case horns) around all of my other perceptions of that company and its products.
makes some decent points here:
Most CEOs are not viewed as trustworthy because customers suspect a one-sided agenda. Enron and other companies have not helped change this perception. Peers, on the hand, are peers or friends because there is in fact a demonstrated relationship. One reason they are perceived to be trustworthy is the earned trust reflected in the relationship.
I would go one step more and say that most Companies are not viewed as trustworthy because of this one-sided agenda. This one-sided agenda all melts away when those same customers are asked for their ideas, their insights, and their participation. No longer is the company some faceless enigma with an agenda, it becomes a distributed team working together on a common goal: making improvements.
Pay it forward… extend trust to your customers. They are the people who pay your salary and make your job possible. With as you build trust with them, you’ll see their loyalty and your profitability improve.
March 6th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
[…] Isn’t it time to get a real dialog started? Provide something that someone wants or needs and you struggle selling it. Treat your customers like they matter and they won’t distrust you. Do the right thing for your customers and they will do the right thing for you.
March 10th, 2008 at 6:04 am
Trust: The Alpha and Omega…
What is the one element which must be in place for a prospect to purchase from you at least once? Byron Webster, founder and Chief of Whisperlabs, sagely suggests that in order to sutstain client relations, trust must be reciprical….