TRUST. It's everything.

An interesting article came across my feed just the other day that got me thinking. Have you ever noticed that some companies just seem to rise above others? I believe that Trust is one of the key intangibles that enable brands to rise up above others and win the day. If you know me, you know that the randomness of my brain stops to think about these things (and sometimes for an inordinate length of time).

The article, actually probably a bit of a self-promoting infomercial for their business, was an article about trustworthy companies. The company doing the study naturally specializes in analytics. None of that is a bad thing, as the companies don't appear to sponsor the analytics or the study per se, so what we end up with is a study on trustworthy companies.

BestBuy tops the list of 'Most Trusted' and when I think of BestBuy, I think "Can they answer my electronics questions and if I need to return my TV, will they take it?" I'm sure managing customer expectations through a supply chain is a monumental task, and one that BestBuy has figured out. I'm sure almost every home in the U.S. has at least 2 televisions, and multiple other devices. Total household spend on electronics has got to be in the 000's, so that's not trivial.

What tickled my brain from this particular article is that while BestBuy is at #1, Intuit sits at #2 on the list. You may not recognize Intuit immediately, but you most likely use their products, or you rely on someone who does. They are the company behind TurboTax and Quickbooks amongst other products. So how does Intuit, a company who knows the financial fingerprint of your small business and the financial fingerprint of your personal finances, become so trusted? That's some seriously sensitive personal and financial information.

Looking at these two companies got me thinking about what both companies have to do to create trust and keep it. I've said in other articles that I believe trust is earned by consistently meeting (or beating) customer expectations over time. I also believe that trust can be lost in a singular event where there is a large miss in customer expectations without accountability on behalf of the company.

Following those assumptions Intuit's customer expectations might be something like:

• collect, store, process accounting 'books' and tax returns correctly year-over-year (conjuring tax reform in my brain), AND
• keep that information secure from unauthorized access, AND
• use that financial information only for the purposes which you expect (said another way, not sell it to third parties).

It appears that Intuit's customer expectations are very different than those of BestBuy. Consider the harm to a customer if the accounting books are wrong, tax return is inaccurate, or if there is unauthorized access to your sensitive financial information (personal or business). It strikes me that harms for an Intuit customer could be a lot more severe, than if you have a problem with a return on a television.

But, despite the differences in customer expectations, and severity of harm to a customer if something goes wrong, both BestBuy and Intuit clearly do what it takes to earn customer trust. Looking further down the list of trusted companies it's also clear that BestBuy and Intuit are significantly ahead of their market competitors, as no obvious competitors even appear on the list.

Cheers to all the companies on the list - you've earned my trust.