The shifting balance of Power

The attempt in this note is to decode how the brand trust gets impacted in the digital age

‘A brand is nothing but an expression of the customer’s loyalty and trust.’

- Phil Dusenberry

‘The times, they are a-changing’

Historically, trust has been generated via high-touch, brand-led relationships.

But today, this balance has shifted in favour of the consumer. New digital business models mean that brands go to where consumers are rather than vice versa – consumers can shop online, book travel and movie tickets online, buy groceries online and much more with a tap on their smartphone screens. Brands are also more answerable to consumers than ever before – through Twitter, Facebook, and online reviews and ratings apps and websites.

Businesses can no longer hide behind complex corporate entities. Today’s consumers are savvy and are at most a few clicks away from finding out anything they wish to know about a brand – from its financials, to its ratings amongst their peer groups, to its work practices and so on. So, how has trust been impacted in the digital age? To understand this, we need to first examine how trust is formed in any relationship.

The Two Mainstays of Trust Building

1.      Reputational or Faith led trust

Reputational or faith led trust is built on hearing something good about someone, or in this case, about a brand, from someone else. If you hear that a brand goes above and beyond in its service, or its ethics, or its work practices, you tend to form a good opinion of the company and its reputation, and believe that the brand does right by its customers. This is may then lead you to try the brand’s product or service yourself, and have your own experience with the brand.

2.      Experience led trust

Experience led trust is formed when the brand proves itself and the customer has a good experience with the brand. When a service is executed well, or perhaps proactively, and the CX in that transaction is positive, this leads to experience led trust. Frequent positive experiences with the same brand will strengthen the customer’s trust in the brand over time. This has been further boosted by technology – with the smartphone at the heart of the experience.

In the digital age, experience is the dominant force that enables customers to trust, or mistrust brands. New brands can also win, purely with this strategy in place. Paypal, Amazon, TripAdvisor and many others built their brand perception first through positive customer experience.

Similarly, a crisis in brand reputation, such as led by negative customer experiences, can spread like wildfire. Johnson and Johnson is currently facing such a crisis of trust and has lost significant market share in India partly due to linkages of its baby care powder with cancer – ironically, cases it is fighting in the US. This just goes to show that in a connected world, crises will follow brands wherever the brand is present. The Tata Nano faced a trust crisis as well, when its cars caught fire and whatsapp videos of the incidents circulated by the thousands. The Nano never recovered from this crisis. It is also much easier today, with competition intensifying, for a consumer to simply switch from a once trusted brand to a newer player. Losing consumer trust, means losing business. The need for a trust framework is now a given.

The Key Tenets of a Trust Framework

Navigating the modern day currents of trust needs a more sophisticated approach that takes a closer look at the brand’s audiences and the media platforms they use. One such approach would be the following:

Tenet #1: Understand your brand’s ability to build and maintain trust amongst its consumers

Focus on those areas of your business that enable you to differentiate yourself as more trustworthy versus your competitors, whilst simultaneously working on those areas that could be perceived as your weaknesses.

Tenet #2: Adapt your brand’s approach across audiences and channels

Emerging technologies like Augmented Reality, AI chatbots and even voice activation will impact your customer’s experiences with your brand. Ensure that with each new technology you adopt, your customers’ experiences are seamlessly positive across channels.

Tenet #3: Engage consumers who mistrust your brand as much as you engage customers who trust it

Consumers who don’t trust your brand can offer relevant insights into your areas of weakness, and provide opportunities for improvement. For example, a customer who is dissatisfied with your customer care offerings can show you exactly why, highlighting shortcomings in your AI chatbot, or point out areas of improvement in your AR platform.

Tenet #4: Monitor the impact of trust across your brand

Trust or the lack thereof will eventually manifest as tangible measures, such as business revenue, loyalty, lapsage and even stock price for listed companies. Tracking trust as one of your brand scores can show you the impact of trust versus other tracked metrics, providing insight into the reasoning behind the bottom line.

Tenet #5: Remember that trust doesn’t have to be heavy, keep it light

We live in an age where customer trust in banking and financial institutions has been shaken by recessions, scams, breaches of corporate governance and general macroeconomic upheaval. The time is ripe to therefore refresh the old tropes for assuring stability and engendering trust. Trust need no longer be rooted in concrete pillars and imposing facades, but can instead be brought alive through friendlier customer facing techniques and quicker business processes that lighten previously painful tasks, all backed by technology. In other words, one way to garner trust in the digital age is not to bury customers in complexity but to give them a way of escaping the mundane and tedious and making tasks light.

# Tenet #6 : Data Governance

Data breaches have become pretty common these days. It would not mean loss of customers if we are transparent about our data governance process and how proactively we have countered the threat . Over a period of time demonstrating security practises and showcasing data governance can build confidence. During this time period it translates to more time spent online . In fact consumers prefer security over convenience. GDPR is such an opportunity to take this seriously and not treat it like a tick box activity .

In Conclusion

It bodes brands well to remember that we live today in a digital world. Technology is only going to get better, and any brand that does not deliver a consistently positive customer experience, will see its trust scores fall, loyalty suffer, and eventually witness an impact on their bottom line. Fortunately, the means to achieve a positive outcome are simple – going back to the basics and remembering the customer is always right, indeed more so in today’s environment where the balance of power has shifted to the consumer. Keeping the customer happy across their preferred media is essential to building, and maintaining brand trust. 

 What is your experience on this ? Would love to hear from you on this !!