Building Trust with Your Customers: A Case Study

Trust matters in business, particularly when you're asking someone to make a significant buying decision.

A customer who trusts you is more likely to believe what you tell them, give you the benefit of the doubt when something goes wrong and come back when they need something else.

And they're more likely to recommend you.

That's important because making a recommendation carries risk. Whether you're recommending a supplier to a colleague, another CEO or a friend, you're putting some of your own reputation behind that decision.

So, how do you earn that level of trust?

There are plenty of answers to that question, but a buying experience I had illustrates one of them rather well.

I was considering buying a new phone.

I popped into my favourite tech shop and started to get into a deep conversation about the phone I was thinking about. We debated battery life and functionality. We talked through memory size, and I was beginning to think it was time to get the credit card out.

Then along came the guy I usually see. When I told him I was thinking of buying the new phone, he suggested I might want to wait. Whilst he wasn’t certain, there were strong signs a new model would be coming out around September.

Furthermore, he started talking through ways I could improve battery life on my existing phone. He suggested changes to settings, and some of the functions that used more battery life that could be avoided.

By the end of the conversation, he'd done something rather more valuable than sell me a phone - he'd reinforced why I trusted him.

Sometimes the right commercial decision is not to make the sale

He could quite easily have sold me the phone that day. I was already considering buying it and probably wouldn't have questioned his recommendation.

Instead, he put my interests ahead of the immediate sale.

That doesn't mean businesses should routinely turn customers away. It means recognising that the value of a customer relationship isn't necessarily measured by the transaction sitting immediately in front of you.

If somebody believes you'll tell them when something isn't right for them, your recommendations carry considerably more weight when you do tell them to buy.

And, importantly, they're much more likely to come back.

Trust is built by what you do

Marketing can make all sorts of promises about expertise, integrity and putting customers first, but those claims only become meaningful when the experience backs them up.

Sometimes the most persuasive demonstration of what your business stands for is the decision not to take somebody's money.

And over the lifetime of a customer relationship, that may prove considerably more valuable than making one extra sale today.

If you're questioning whether what your marketing promises matches what customers actually experience, let's have a conversation.