How to systematically build trust

Let's imagine the following situation: A person you have never met before shows up at your door and wants to spend the night. Would you agree? Probably not: you don't know whether you can trust the strange person. The person could turn out to be an unpleasant guest. Or even worse: as a serial killer. Nevertheless, the U.S. company Airbnb has managed to have its users decide to let a stranger stay overnight at their home more than 500 million times in the last 13 years.

And with enormous success: the company is now worth more than 100 billion US dollars. Anyone familiar with the company's history knows that this new trust between hosts and travelers has come about by anything but chance. Instead, together with Harvard Business School, the company has meticulously investigated what the trust of its users depends on and systematically created the necessary framework for genuine trust.

So trust does not arise somehow by chance. On the contrary, decades of research have shown quite well under which conditions it can arise. By creating the right conditions, companies can make the emergence of trust more likely. Such trust work can be understood as trust architecture: Similar to the way architects plan bridges and houses, the development of trust can be approached systematically. This requires both psychological knowledge about the determinants of trust and a sensible methodological approach.

The question is not whether we need trust, but in what

The success of companies depends to a large extent on the trust that is placed in them. It should be borne in mind that we do not trust each other in principle, but in a very differentiated way. One example: Many Germans will agree to trust the national postal service. Every day, we are able to experience how this company, steeped in history, keeps its promises by reliably delivering our letters, documents and parcels at the agreed location. However, the high level of trust in Deutsche Post's core business is not easily transferable to other areas.

In January 2020, for example, the German postal service had to discontinue the E-Postbrief after ten unsuccessful years. We trust the Post to deliver our letters reliably - but apparently not that it can do the same in the digital context. Companies working to develop customer trust should therefore define it as precisely as possible, wherein their customers should be able to trust them. Similar to the postal service, they will discover in many cases: The trust that exists today is not necessarily what is needed for a successful future.

Three prerequisites: Want, ability and assessment

For genuine trust to develop between companies and their customers, three conditions must be met: Wanting, being able, and assessing. And it is only when all three conditions are met that genuine trust can develop.

Want: The story of good intentions

Companies are trustworthy when they do the right thing for their customers. wantin other words, have good intentions. For this reason, entire industries struggle with the mistrust of their customers. The insurance industry, for example, regularly tops the polls in terms of customer distrust. The reason why customers distrust their insurers is not that the companies are too poorly capitalized and therefore their solvency is feared. Rather, distrust lies in the fact that they act benevolently and sincerely in the interests of the policyholder during the consultation or in the event of a claim. In the specific case of insurance, this is sometimes due to existing conflicts of interest. Customers realize this as early as the purchase of an insurance policy: The more honestly I answer these health questions, the more expensive the insurance will be. In the event of a claim, at the latest, they realize: Every euro that the insurance company pays for my damage is missing from the company's annual profit.

The financial interests of insurance companies are therefore often exactly opposite to those of their customers. Against this backdrop, companies should focus their entrepreneurial work on the needs of their customers in a sincere and clearly recognizable manner and, in addition, create framework conditions in which their interests harmonize with those of their customers. This is successfully demonstrated, for example, by the U.S. insurer Lemonade, whose customers do not have to fear any conflict with their insurer in the event of a claim: The fewer claims the insurer has to pay, the more is donated. However, the insurer's own annual profit remains unaffected.

Skill: The skills count

Companies are trustworthy when they have very specific capabilities and can demonstrate them effectively. That makes sense: Good intentions alone are simply not enough; we also want to be sure that the company can deliver. Which specific competencies a company needs depends on this, wherein customers should be able to trust them: Online retailers, for example, that they deliver quickly and take back the goods ordered without complications. Or manufacturers that they deliver high quality and pay attention to ethical and sustainable supply chains. Ultimately, it is always a matter of companies keeping their own (value) promises - and doing so as continuously as possible, over and over again. Many of the companies with a particularly high level of customer trust are characterized by the fact that they are firmly anchored in their customers' everyday lives with their value proposition and can prove it anew every day: We keep our promises. For example, retailers who provide their customers with everyday necessities every day and typically score particularly well in trust studies.

In contrast, companies whose offerings are used less frequently and who are in less frequent contact with their customers struggle in the trust game under more difficult conditions. They simply have less of a chance to prove their trustworthiness. Let's think, for example, of electricity providers that deliver electricity on a daily basis but are only visible to their customers a few times a year. These companies should work all the more meticulously to identify and build up the skills necessary for individual customer trust and to present them as dazzlingly as possible.

Assess: The right sense of proportion

Companies are trustworthy when they do the right thing for their customers. want and can. For genuine trust to develop, however, there is a third essential prerequisite: this trustworthiness must also be recognizable to customers. Customers must therefore be able to identify companies as well as possible. assess can trust them. This poses challenges for new and innovative companies in particular. After all, it helps enormously to be able to assess a company or product well if customers already know it. In contrast, it is difficult to assess the trustworthiness of a new product or company with which one has not yet had the opportunity to gain experience.

Fortunately, there are effective strategies that can be used to achieve genuine trust even without first-hand experience. One of these becomes clear with a look at electromobility: At the end of 2020, the best-selling electric car in Europe was one that doesn't look all that new at first glance: the VW ID.3. It is a 100 % electric and thus radically new car on the inside. From the outside, however, it looks first and foremost like a VW Golf that has been familiar for generations. Apparently, customers find it easier to trust a new technology if at least its packaging is already familiar. So for companies that rely on their customers trying something brand new, it can be a good idea to look for connections to their customers' existing experiences. Another effective alternative to your own experience is the experience of others.

Companies are meeting the demand for experience reports and ratings on the Internet primarily through rating systems that query user experiences and display them to other users in relevant decision-making situations. The enormous effectiveness of this approach can be seen, for example, in the Airbnb platform mentioned at the beginning of this article. Its reputation system seems to work so well that it even overrides the basic human tendency of users to trust people who are similar to themselves. In order for genuine trust to develop, companies should therefore work to make it as easy as possible for their customers to assess their trustworthiness.

The goal of trust architecture is trustworthiness

For companies, trust is a fundamental success factor. Without trust there can be no cooperation and without cooperation there can be no company. The development of trust should therefore be a top priority for companies. However, genuine trust can only develop if companies act sustainably in the interests of their customers and ensure that their trust pays off for them. Conversely, if trust is exploited, it is nipped in the bud. Dhe goal here should therefore not be conversion optimization, not increased sales, and not customer lifetime value. The goal of trust work is to develop trust between companies and their customers. And this requires the firm will to behave in a trustworthy manner toward customers. The sustainable development of trust does not have to be at odds with short-term increases in sales or growth. The aim is to create customer experiences that reconcile both sides: Sales and growth on the one hand and customer trust on the other.

* Eric Eller is a social psychologist and senior managing consultant at Elaboratum. His new book "Trust Architecture. How trust is created and how companies create the right customer experiences for it" was published by Vahlen Verlag in March 2022.