Trust between customers and businesses has reached a critical low point, and the storm of skepticism continues to gain momentum. However, there's a silver lining: this trust deficit affects your competitors as well. As CX practitioners, we hold the keys to safeguarding our businesses, reducing costs, and gaining an edge in this turbulent market.

This decline in trust accelerates changes, both positive and negative, in customer loyalty.

The current state of trust

To console ourselves, it's not just big business institutions that people are losing trust in. Gallup's longitudinal Confidence in Institutions study reveals that trust in nearly every institution is at its lowest point on record.

I recently spoke with a CX expert at a global luxury brand. Their contact center is witnessing increased high-conflict behaviors from clients. There's more emotion on calls, more escalations, and changing expectations. This phenomenon seems to be universal in customer service. Ask your customer service team, and they'll tell you that they're having more challenging conversations more frequently than ever before.

Multifaceted causes of trust decline.

The causes of this trust erosion are myriad, but critically include the different demographics, & psychographics of our aging customer base, the “post-truth” environment and business’s own choices.

Pew Research Center has found that baseline trust levels are associated with demographic factors, including race, ethnicity, age, education, and household income. As Millennials and Gen Z "graduate" to the market, their perspectives are influencing average trust levels.

Of course this is not a 'generation' problem; Pew found that more Americans view fabricated news as a "very big problem for the country" than issues like terrorism, illegal immigration, racism, and sexism. The "post-truth" environment means clients are less likely to believe what you say and more likely to penalize mistakes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has also upheaved societal norms on an unprecedented scale. Online shopping, for instance, saw a decade's worth of growth in just eight weeks, and much of it has stuck. Societal values have changed in ways we are yet to fully understand. Consider the controversy over vaccinations, or wearing masks – both topics more fraught and nuanced than I expected, certainly.

We're not mere victims of circumstance; big business has played a role in this problem through the management systems we've employed. Our lean, global, and just-in-time supply chains, while efficient, proved fragile during the COVID-19 and related crises, resulting in delays and broken promises to customers. Moreover, many businesses continue to neglect customer centricity, relying on outdated models like the purchase funnel. Thinking of the customer relationship as linear and transactional when 78% of customers develop loyalty after purchase misses the complexity and opportunity within CX.

Solutions for building & rebuilding trust.

In the upcoming posts, we'll explore simple yet impactful solutions to establish, repair, and maintain trust with your clients:

• How to own mistakes and handle complaints gracefully (research shows this leads to higher customer loyalty and willingness to pay, even if the desired outcome isn't achieved).

• Defending against the natural entropy that erodes value within your operations.

• Innovating your processes using empathy to see the world through your customer's eyes.

Customer experience is the key to rebuilding trust between your organization and its clients. If you want to talk about improving complaints, building a stronger customer service team, or finding innovative solutions to service problems, reach out. We're passionate about our customers’ Customer Experience.