Without Trust in Your Brand, Forget It

Without Trust in Your Brand, Forget It!

A product or service is just an aspect of a brand—in some cases perhaps not the most important part of the brand experience. The ways products or services are displayed, talked about, and handled and problems are solved all relate to trust and the total brand experience. And when customer service delivery and products are aligned so the brand can be trusted, the effect is irresistible. When not, the impact is palpable and memorable.

on-brand and off-brand

Janelle and her husband live in the Red Rock Country Club community in Las Vegas. Here is how the Web site promotes the community: "Welcome to Red Rock Country Club. Live Exclusive. Play Private."

After extensive travel, Janelle returned to the club and was greeted by a young woman behind the counter, "Dr. Barlow! You're back! We missed you." She received an exclusive greeting using a formal title yet with a very personal welcome. It was decidedly on-brand, creating a strong feeling of belonging.

Yet when Janelle repeatedly complained about the temperature of the Club's lap pool that was being kept at a temperature higher than advertised, she was told among other things by the general manager, "Look, lady, you're not the only one who swims in that pool,"—not exactly "live exclusive" or "play private." It felt more like feedback one might receive at a public swimming pool. It was definitely off-brand, making it impossible for Janelle to trust the quality of her morning swim and how she will be treated when complaining about it.

Consumers ask: Can I trust this organization? Are promises met when it actually delivers its products and services? Is it following through on commitments, or is its advertising just so many words and images with no action behind them? Clearly, a company's ability to deliver what it declares is fundamental to its reputation. Therefore, the ability to move from a compelling strategy about a brand to authentic delivery of the brand is paramount in building trust.

We know that trust is hard to come by in today's world, as witnessed by deceptions from a growing list of our most revered institutions. A recent study put a large exclamation mark on this point. Sponsored by the respected Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals, four thousand customers of nine blue-chip Australian organizations were surveyed. The study revealed that only one in twenty customers trust the organizations that serve them; even worse, only one in forty believe organizations trust them! ^[14]

You can say "trust me," but that does not mean you are trustworthy. Food giants Kellogg and Cadbury are more trusted in the UK than either the police force or the British government. Yet both the police and government regularly insist they are trustworthy. ^[15] Since trust is formed as a result of the judgments people make about behaviors over a period of time, developing a brand is much like establishing the character of a person. Consumers have learned through experience that Kellogg and Cadbury deliver consistent quality and products that speak to them personally, thereby proving they can be trusted. Apparently this is lacking with British law enforcement and government burdened with the challenge of delivering service through staff.

If you are to achieve the type of customer-staff interaction that enhances your brand, you must offer more than lip service to the value of trust. Branding can be best understood as a business strategy in great part to gain consumer trust. In this regard, branding is like broad market satisfaction and trust development, both of which have long been regarded by marketing experts as "relatively stable, cumulative phenomena that change gradually over time." ^[16]

Branding strategy needs to be looked at in terms of its long-term market impact. If you want to get into the marketplace, make some quick revenue, and then get out, then branding is not for you. Branding is more transformational in terms of how it ultimately shapes organizations precisely because it is trust based: we promise, we deliver. When this is not done, customer relationships are more likely to be short-term, immediate, and transactional—and do little to build brand trust.

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, underscores the uneasy nature of any transformational strategy that is put into place—and then must be allowed to proceed on its own: "The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important—and then get out of their way while they do it." ^[17]

You need to equip your customer service representatives with information, tools, techniques, and ideas that assist in creating positive customer transactions. Equally important, you must imbue them with the "fragrance" of your brand and then "get out of their way" so they can deliver. Only then will staff be encouraged to use their best judgment as to what is required to deliver the brand in each unique customer exchange and thereby develop consumer trust.

Trustworthy does not mean merely being reliable. Based on Research International's studies, brand trust has much more to do with intimacy; that is, how does the organization show customers they are more than just statistics, that it knows them personally? ^[18]

off-brand NO TRUST

Janelle recently went to her HMO to pick up a drug prescription from a doctor who was staffing the evening clinic. Janelle had been promised a prescription from her regular physician, but his office had failed to send it to the pharmacy (Trust Violation No. 1). Janelle was leaving the United States the next morning, so she went to the after-hours clinic. The emergency doctor insisted on doing all types of tests, including taking her temperature and weighing her, when all she wanted was a prescription that had been promised earlier in the day over the phone. When Janelle protested, the doctor said, "How can I trust you? I don't know you" (Trust Violation No. 2). Janelle responded, "How can you not know or trust me? I've been a member of your health services for two and a half years. You have my complete medical records in front of you that show I have been taking this medication for the entire time period."

^[14]Michael Edwardson et al., Consumer Emotions Study, SOCAP (Australia, 2003): 2. Available through [e-mail].

^[15]David Haigh, "The Role of Brands and Brand Managers," Brand Finance, May 2000.

^[16]For a marketing perspective, see Michael D. Johnson, Eugene W. Anderson, and Claes Fornell, "Rational and Adaptive Performance Expectations in a Customer Satisfaction Framework," Journal of Consumer Research 21, no. 4 (March 1995): 695–707.

^[17]As quoted in H. James Harrington, "Creating Organizational Excellence-Part Five," Quality Digest 23, no. 5 (May 2003): 14, 54.

^[18]See Max Blackston, "Observations: Building Brand Equity by Managing the Brand's Relationships," Journal of Advertising Research (January 2000).