By michaelpace on January 8, 2013
Last week my friend passed away. He wasn’t only my friend; he was a peer, my manager, a career changer, a mentor, and overall great guy. Larry (Streeter) and I had met up the Friday before Christmas to catch up and talk customer service and leadership shop. As it often did, the conversation turned to retention strategies, support, loyalty, and advocacy programs.
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Me: “Well, it’s all about trust.”
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Larry: “But what does that really mean? You sound like someone who has guru at end of your title.”
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(Good point)
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Me: “What does trust mean to you? And you can’t say what it is not, or how you break it or earn it. That’s not a definition buddy.”
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We continued on for about another hour, until we started going off on tangents that will remain our own business. But, looking back it is fitting that one of our last conversations was about Trust.
So what is Trust? How do you impact it? And is it important to almost every facet of your business?
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My Definition: Trust is the confidence that a party/company/person/group is sincere, competent and reliable to meet the customer/person or affected group’s expectations.
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Sincerity, Competency and Reliability – I like to think these drivers are analogous to a 3 legged stool. If one of the “legs” is broken, the stool is going to rock or come crashing down (just like your trust).
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Sincerity: Asking your “customers” if they believe you care about them, are not deceitful, honest or have their interest at heart.
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Competency: Do you or your company have the ability (or competency) to deliver as expected? I am sure we all run across someone or a company that has the best intentions and is always available but their end product or service is just lacking. Sometimes lacking in this driver is due to poor operational processes, training, general knowledge or expertise.
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Reliability: Do you deliver on time, per spec, within budget of your customer’s expectations consistently? This key driver is probably the easiest for you or your “customer” to measure, because it is very tangible. Did the delivery company show up on time? Has a company given you the right product? Did it cost more than the sticker on the box? Internally, companies can ask if they met their SLA’s (service level agreements) and how often. They can look at their uptime/downtime of their website. They can monitor and track billing issues.
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3 Critical Use Cases involving Trust
People & Talent Management
I can do a lot of amazing things, but I cannot do them all myself. Great leaders have people they can trust to get things done, and done well. But have you ever stopped yourself from delegating a task to someone? Why? Somewhere along the line, you do not trust that associate to complete the task as you believe it should be done. One or more of the key drivers of trust is not meeting your expectations. Do you believe the person/team wants to complete the assignment to a high degree of quality or do they care about the initiative? (Sincerity) Do the individuals have the competency or skills to get it done? Have they failed you in the past on a similar project? (Reliability)
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Understanding where you feel an individual or team is falling short here, is critical to their development. If Reliability or Sincerity (or both) are not up to your standards, an open conversation about your fears is needed. If Competency is lacking, find ways to develop those skills within the project or outside of it for the future.
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Building a Social Business
You cannot build a social business without Trust; simple. A social business requires that the organization trusts its associates to conduct its business over social networks with a high degree of autonomy and structure. Usually Sincerity is not the main issue here, except in those incidents of associates ripping the company in public. Usually, “the owners” of the social channels do not believe individuals, teams, or departments have the Competency (social and community management skills) and the Reliability (or consistency) to work in a highly competent manner.
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The great news is that both Competency and Reliability can be corrected. Developing Competency is all about continuous learning and training. Create training programs that give them the ability to work socially. Build process and governance models that outlines boundaries. Once competent, provide lower risk opportunities to prove Reliability (then audit and measure for quality).
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Customer Trust
Maybe the Ultimate Question is not “How likely are you to refer Company X to your friends, family and colleagues?”, maybe the new ultimate question in today’s world is “Do you trust us?” After all, you probably would not refer anyone to a company you do not trust. In this social landscape, trust may be the most valuable commodity your company can offer.
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As mentioned before:
Sincerity: Asking your customers if they believe you care about them, are not deceitful, honest or have their interest at heart. You may ask them to review your site, materials, products, etc.. to learn if they believe you have their interests top of mind or even if you understand them. Audit yourself as well. Drug and Oil companies seem to consistently fall short on this driver.
Competency: Do you or your company have the ability (or competency) to deliver as expected? I am sure we all run across someone or a company that has the best intentions and is always available but their end product or service is just lacking. Sometimes lacking in this driver is due to poor operational processes, training, general knowledge or expertise. I see consultants and inexperienced people/companies falling down on this attribute most often.
Reliability: Do you deliver on time, per spec, within budget of your customer’s expectations consistently? This key driver is probably the easiest for you or your customer to measure, because it is very tangible. Did the delivery company show up on time? Has a company given you the right product? Did it cost more than the sticker on the box? Internally, companies can ask if they met their SLA’s (service level agreements) and how often. They can look at their uptime/downtime of their website. They can monitor and track billing issues. We trust FedEx here; rarely do we trust the USPS.
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Yes, I understand there may not be a silver bullet metric for trust. The customer service world as a whole is the same, no one metric can provide the clearest indication if you are doing it well. However with Customer Service, we do have proxies, and we do understand what drives exceptional service. At a conference I recently attended, it was clear the wave of social media talk (within our social media bubble-very important distinction) is ending, and the discussion is moving to the question of “How do you operationalize and manage this space well?” We will need to stop saying things like “You need to build trust with your customers”, and move to “How are you defining and measuring the trust your customers have of you?”
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More on measuring Trust
I’m sad that I won’t be able to have another conversation like this with my friend, but I trust that he is looking down now and is happy the conversation continues.
Are there any other factors you think that drives Trust?
How many times in a day/week/month are you not delegating, because you do not trust someone on your team?
Can “Do you Trust us?” be the next ultimate customer question?