The value of trust.
A call centre contacted me a few days ago. The operator said that she was calling on behalf of H. my current provider of energy / gas and she made me an incredibly advantageous new rate offer.
According to the "selling story" H. had decided to buy energy and gas from I., an Italian manufacturer, rather than from abroad, thus reducing transportation costs. Accepting the new offer would have implied just an administrative update from my side and my provider would not have changed; simply H. would have transferred me the economic benefit of its new buying strategy.
While the operator was talking in a few clicks, I discovered that I. is a competitor of H. (and not one of its suppliers), and that its brand has already previously been linked to deceptive trade practices.
I reported the event to I.’s customer service and I received their answer within 24h.
While acknowledging that the call came from one of its business partners, I. allocated full responsibility of the event to "the unpleasant initiative of a single operator whom on we took proper action, through our partner."
I did not appreciate either the tones of the email or the “automatic mail mode” answer that I was given.
I doubt that this was actually depending on the initiative of a single operator.
Call centre operators in fact strictly adhere to a script, to ensure:
- efficiency (operator’s time is money)
- effectiveness (call centres are typically high turnover structures and there is not always time to train new operators properly),
- compliance with laws and regulations, in particular on “public interest businesses” such as telco and utilities
Therefore typically an operator has practically zero autonomy in managing the call contents.
I do not want to think that it is I. who instructs the call centres they work with to falsely represent their products, but certainly the customer experience is extremely negative in this case, because any relationship of #trust has been heavily undermined.
Digitalisation has brought the advantage of options and significantly lower prices for customers therefore customer loyalty has become much harder to secure.
And in the era where trust has become the new currency of the global economy (Covey SMR, Link G, R. Merrill, "Smart Trust"), the acquisition of new customers depends entirely on building strong relationships of trust and not on "selling".
Yet, few companies really build this capability that is a performance multiplier and a corporate culture's competitive advantage.
According to 2016 Harris Poll's report that surveyed more than 23,000 people, 72% of consumers investigate corporate behaviour before buying, while more than half (53%) of the general public indicated they proactively seek information about the companies they do business with.
According to this report, one of the biggest risks to corporate reputation is lying or misrepresenting facts about a product or service (cited by 80% of the respondents).
A great customer experience is built around trust in your brand, and the repeated validation of that trust as customers interact with your business. By building that trust relationship, you don’t just create a better experience for your clients, you can gain long-term, true-believer brand advocates.
Nothing is as fast as the speed of trust, as profitable as the economics of trust and as essential to leadership as relationships of trust.
Trust is truly the one thing that changes everything, because trust means to be sincerely convinced that the other has in mind the best for your interests.
The ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust with all stakeholders is the critical #leadership competency of the new global economy.