In my years working with Fortune 500 companies, I’ve seen firsthand how systematically building and maintaining customer trust creates what I call “The Trust Tailwind” — an accelerating force that fuels growth through shorter sales cycles, smoother cross-sells, and stronger advocacy. These advantages compound over time, helping trusted brands outperform their competitors by as much as 4x (Source: Deloitte).
On the flip side, I’ve seen what happens when you ignore trust or leave it to chance. Your business has the same market challenges everyone else does plus drag from things like reputational damage, increased churn, and contentious contract negotiations.
As I’ve been talking to leaders about trust, I’m hearing a good news/bad news story. The good news is that some aspects of trust are already on their radar screen like product reliability, cross-channel consistency, and aligning metrics with the customers’ definition of success.
These are important, but they aren’t the only pieces of the puzzle. Here are three other subtle but essential types of trust that your organization may not be thinking about but should.
Trust in the Business (vs.Trust in Products)
When I interview B2B buyers on behalf of clients, most are happy with the vendor’s product but admit they’re concerned about the company itself.
Some question the C-Suite’s ability to make sound business decisions based on past gaffes. Others hesitate to spend more because the vendor’s product roadmap feels as clear as mud. A third aspect of business-related trust that’s top of mind these days is stakeholder management. High-profile stories like Southwest Airlines’ controversial decision to start charging bag fees and companies passing new tariffs on to buyers are making us more sensitive to how corporate CEOs negotiate balance across competing needs.
Trust in the Process (vs. Trust in People)
Account managers, support teams, and customer success managers are often masters at building trust. What happens if they leave? Relationships they manage will take a hit.
Rather than just rely on star employees, smart companies actively cultivate trust in processes regardless of who executes them. They provide visibility into what’s going on so customers will put data and/or issues into “the system” without fear that it’s falling into some self-service black hole. The alternative to a trusted process is constant escalation–growth killer extraordinaire. Sadly, I’ve seen many organizations inadvertently “teach” their customers that calling their account manager or executive sponsor is the only way to get anything done. Leaders and sales teams have to spend all their time fire-fighting and doing damage control instead of finding new ways to grow the business.
Accountability for Impact (vs. Trust in Intentions)
No one shows up to work saying, “How can I upset customers today?” Most organizations mean well, but good intentions aren’t enough, especially if the company’s actions cause real harm.
Data from Salesforce shows 71% of customers want humans to validate AI output. I think that’s partly to keep companies from weaseling out of responsibility. Arguing that “AI did it without our knowledge,” didn’t work for Air Canada, and it shouldn’t work for anyone else. That said, the tension between impact and intention isn’t unique to tech. In “Dying for a Paycheck,” Dr. Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford University explained that companies rarely pay the full cost of the way they do business. He found factors like micromanaging, not giving employees control over their work, and layoffs–among others–drive as many as 100,000 excess deaths and $190 billion in extra healthcare spending per year (US). No one company caused this problem, but customers will reward companies that show they are trying to be part of the solution.
Raise Trust Topics with Curiosity to Spark Conversation
These are big topics, I know. I recently launched new research to get specifics on how B2B companies design experiences that systematically build customer trust. For more information on that and to participate, email or message me on LinkedIn.
You don’t have to wait to start a conversation with your own team, however. Try asking a few simple, powerful questions like the ones below. I promise it will get everyone thinking about trust in a new way.
- Customers may trust our products and services, but how much do they trust the business? Would they want our executive team making decisions for their company?
- Customers trust our people, but how much do they trust our processes? If their main contact(s) left, how confident would they be that they’d be able to do everything they need to do?
- Customers trust that we have good intentions, but how much responsibility do they think we take for our impact? “If something bad happened that affected our customers or community, how do customers think we would respond?”
