Trust is an underused, underappreciated asset–especially in business. We know it’s important; PWC’s 2024 Trust in Business study found 93% of executives think building and maintaining trust will improve the bottom line. They’re right. Trust Across America found we’re 91% more likely to buy from organizations we trust, and trusted organizations are 2.5x times likely to be high revenue performers vs. their competition.
Unfortunately, the group of trusted companies is shrinking. Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer, 7th Edition shows 71% of people trust companies less than they did a year ago; only 29% trust them more. That loss of trust is creating a headwind that makes this already ricky environment even tougher. Getting meetings and cross-selling, negotiating terms and resolving technical problems – they all take longer when our mental energy is being drained by worrying what those on the other side of the table are up to.
It doesn’t have to be that way. By consistently working to earn and keep customer trust, you can create a positive force that I call The Trust Tailwind.
Trust creates a powerful, pervasive, and often invisible impact on every corner of business. It’s not a silver bullet. Trust won’t prevent problems, but it will make resolving them easier. People are more likely to be cooperative than hostile when dealing with someone they trust. Trust doesn’t guarantee you’ll win every deal, either, but it earns you a spot in more of the right conversations.
I feel so passionately about the untapped potential of trust that I’ve spent more than a year diving into the latest research and dedicate most of 2025 to sharing what I’ve learned. This article is the first installment in a series of pieces on what companies can do to earn and keep trust in a sadly cynical world.
Where Trust Comes From: The BASE
To earn trust, it helps to know where it comes from. Four sources shape how trustworthy a customer or prospect thinks you are. Together they spell the acronym BASE:
- Baseline. Some of us are naturally more trusting than others. That personal set point shapes how we interpret information and make judgements about trust. Skeptics are less likely to believe what you say and more likely to assume actions are the result of some self-serving agenda. Sadly, the portion of skeptics in the world has been growing for decades. Studies from Edelman and The Pew Research Center consistently show people around the world are less trusting of individuals, organizations, and institutions than we were a generation ago. Sadly, that means no matter how hard we work, we’re starting at a clear disadvantage.
- Associations. When people come across something new, they try to match it to things they already know. Is this a cat or a dog? A Mom-n-Pop or conglomerate? The groups they associate you with cast either a shadow or light on how trustworthy they think you are. Non-profits and B-Corps get more trust than for-profit firms. Insurance providers are seen as less trustworthy than…just about everyone. Brand teams may try to counter this “guilt by association.” That’s what T-Mobile’s “Uncarrier” slogan was all about and why many Fintech firms emphasize that they aren’t traditional banks. In the end, though, it’s human nature to put people into some box and make assumptions about them based on what others in that box have done.
- Stories. Story-shaping is a multi-billion sector that includes marketing, PR, social media, and customer marketing. People may never have dealt with your firm but decide if they trust you or not based solely on the stories they’ve heard. Influencing the narrative is an uphill battle. The media is even less trusted than business, and most people assume that what companies say is a rose colored version of reality. We’re most likely to trust stories told directly by the one who lived them, but most stories are mundane so they may not stick. Human brains are wired to notice outliers so a single extreme story can overshadow a dozen simple ones for quite some time.
- Experience. Humans trust ourselves more than anyone, so our first-hand experiences with a person or firm carry the most weight in mental trust calculations. Most of these interactions aren’t Earth shattering. They nudge you to trust someone a little more or a little less, but quickly fade into memory. Enough nudges stacked up over time, though, can make a difference. Consistently good experiences can rebuild trust with someone who has let us down in the past. Multiple missteps in a row, on the other hand, can chip away what was a positive relationship. This bit-by-bit trust dynamic is one reason NPS scores often lag behind direct experience metrics by a year or two. Directly measuring the quality of each experience enables you to spot patterns and change them sooner.
Of these four sources, experience is where organizations have the most control. That’s why I’ve always encouraged leaders to track CX quality AND its impact on trust.
It doesn’t take much; one question works at the transactional and journey-level:
How did this interaction impact your level of trust in [ ACME Corp ]?
- It didn’t change how much I trust them
- It made me trust them a little more
- It made me trust them significantly more
- It made me trust them a little less
- It made me trust them significantly less
Personally, I think customers find this question easier to answer than whether or not they will buy again or recommend the organization to others.
It’s also more personal, signaling that you care about the relationship for its own sake, not just its contribution to the bottom line. Relationships may not matter to all buyers, but I believe they matter to more people than we think.
In a world where trust is increasingly scarce, organizations that proactively seek to earn and maintain it will have an advantage. Their Trust Tailwind will help them weather tough times and out-grow the competition even faster when times are good.
If you’d like to talk more about how to earn customer trust in your business, simply reply to this email. And stay tuned for the next installment of my Trust Tailwind series coming soon.
Sources: Edelman Trust Barometer, 2025. Pew Research: 2019, General Social Survey 2019.
