Okay so, you’re probably wondering what makes a business “trustworthy” anyway? How can you even evaluate something like this? Well, you can, and it all begins with understanding the anatomy of trust. This consists of seven important components that paint a clear picture of what trust really means. In both the business world and your own.
Let’s review these seven components together starting with our boundaries.
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Know Your Boundaries
Boundaries are essential to building trustworthy relationships. A business without boundaries has an unreliable foundation. You need to make these boundaries clear and concise at the beginning of each working relationship.
Just think about this for a moment. If you’re a business that is always saying yes to your customers you’re probably spreading things a bit thin. When you stretch yourself like this the little things start to show.
- The ability to fill orders is slowed.
- The staff is exhausted and irritable.
- Projects aren’t making their deadlines as promised.
How can your customers trust you to deliver on time? Or, trust your employees to uphold quality customer service. Your buyers need to rest assured that relying on the promises you’ve made to them will be fulfilled.
This goes for your customer relationships with your business as well. If your customer doesn’t have set boundaries about their expectations of your business they could betray you at any moment by leaving bad reviews, and exaggerate their displeasure doing so. Beware the limits customers are willing to have with your business.
You and your customers need to have a definitive understanding of what to expect from each other. This helps make you and your customers reliable. Speaking of reliability…
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Be Reliable
Being reliable is another important component to building a trustworthy business. Your customers have projects to complete, deadlines to meet, and their own people to keep satisfied, if not impress. If you’re not reliable for their business they can’t be reliable for theirs. Whether it be their professional or personal business.
I’m sure you can think of a time when you needed to rely on someone in your life that didn’t or couldn’t come through for you. Afterward, you might have had a harder time trusting that person the way you used to. You probably wouldn’t even think to ask for help again. This is the same feeling your customers get when they can’t count on your business.
If your customers can’t depend on your company, they’ll find someone else to do the job for them–most likely your competitor. When you are not reliable, you not only lose your customers’ trust, you put them in a very awkward position. Because someone is going to have to be held accountable for these mistakes.
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Be Accountable
Making mistakes in business is something that we all do. From CEOs to business owners, to their employees, and why? Because we’re all human. A condition I hope everyone reading this article is familiar with.
The thing about making a mistake in business or in life is you can’t just say “oops!” and expect things to get better from there. You have to hold yourself accountable for the things that you’ve messed up.
Apologize sincerely, ask for forgiveness, and never make that mistake again. Do you know what it means when you make a mistake more than once? It means that you’re no longer making a mistake. You’re making a decision.
Hold yourself and your business accountable when a wrong needs to be righted. Customers will continue to do business with a company that goes out of its way to make up for their mishaps.
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Be a Vault
Customers have a lot to say. About your business, your products, your services, and your competition. If your customer has something negative to say about your competitors, don’t spread that gossip around.
When you share your customers’ negative experiences about your competitors with the rest of the world you drag your customer’s name through the mud. As I’m sure most of you know, this kind of cattiness can ruin relationships.
Be the better business and don’t attack your competitors with your customers’ reputations. No one has ever looked good by bringing others down. Listen to and accept your customer feedback without feeding into it.
Also, keep in mind, some customers may have some delicate information they don’t want to share about their business with you. For example, a plastic surgeon does a facelift on an A-list celebrity. The celebrity isn’t going to want the public to know that they’ve had some work done. So, you keep that information confidential.
This example is a bit extreme, and there are HIPPA laws in place to avoid this particular situation but, it gives you a clear picture of how sensitive the information you receive from your customers can be. It could be something as simple as a stylist not letting the ladies at the salon know their client’s actual age or a bookkeeper divulging a client’s financial status.
Being a vault with what your customers share with you makes you a very trustworthy company to do business with. So, keep that information to yourself.
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Have Integrity
Okay so, who here knows the actual definition of integrity? It’s okay if you don’t. It’s not as obvious as you’d imagine and it doesn’t mean that you don’t already have integrity for not knowing its meaning.
Merriam-Webster defines integrity as a firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values, an unimpaired condition, the quality or state of being complete or undivided.
As you can see here, this word has a lot of meaning behind it and so should your business. Having integrity for your business isn’t that different from practicing your own personal integrity. However, there are a few tools you have at hand for building a more honorable business and you should be using them.
To instill integrity in your company you’ll need to create core values, a mission, and a vision statement that is comprehensible and realistic. A code that your customers and employees can understand and be proud to uphold. Then stick to that code! Your business and customers will appreciate it.
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Be Non-Judgemental
This might seem like a pretty obvious concept, but we make judgments all the time without even realizing that we’re doing it. This is something to be very conscious of when evaluating a customer’s needs and wants in your products and/or services. If you aren’t careful, you could lose your customer to mistrust.
Let’s use you in this example here. You hire an event planner for a very special occasion. You have dreamed up the entire event. You know the colors, the linens, the lighting, and the guest list like the back of your hand, and you just can’t wait to share your vision with your new event planner!
But when you tell them all about your dream celebration they say “Oh, that color is going to make everyone look washed out in your photos!”, you’re instantly crushed and now regret hiring this person. Your trust in them to make your dream come true has been deformed.
Now, that doesn’t mean the event planner was necessarily wrong about your choice of color. The color you wanted might just end up making everyone look washed out in your pictures but, there was a better way to convey this information to you. A much less critical way.
Imagine the event planner instead said to you, “Oh, that’s a lovely color but I’m a bit concerned about how it will show. I want your pictures to come out perfectly. This color may make your guests look washed out in your photos. Would you be open to using a different color? Or, perhaps another gradient of this color you’ve chosen?”.
That was a lot less hurtful to hear, wasn’t it? You might just be willing to change your color or even the entire palette for your special event now. Because your event planner shared their expertise and not just their critical opinion with you.
I’d be willing to bet that you’d trust this event planner now with your entire shindig, and any other future events you might want to put on if they expressed themselves in a non-judgmental manner. It’s always easier to trust someone that doesn’t judge you for judgment’s sake.
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Be Generous
Give what you can give when you can give it. Seems like an easy rule to follow for building a trustworthy business, right? Well, think again! Customers can demand a lot from a business and it’s up to you to keep your boundaries on how much you can give.
There will be times when your business has a great deal of abundance and you should share it. When you give a little extra you’ll get a little extra. Keeping all that extra to yourself doesn’t really help your business, it hurts it. Especially in your local communities.
People want to buy from businesses that give back. Businesses that pay less than what their employees could be making, for example, often make the news in negative ways. When customers see this, they lose trust in these companies and find themselves shopping at their competitors instead.
Be careful though! Businesses fall on hard times too. The pandemic affected businesses so severely that many had to close their doors, for good. Prepare for unforeseen circumstances like this as best you can and get a strong hold on what exactly you can be generous with during times like this.
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Trustworthy Businesses
Well, there you have it! The anatomy of trust. Seven simple rules to follow in order to make your business one that anyone could put their confidence in.
Do you still need a little convincing that being trustworthy is what your business needs? Well, here is a shortlist of just a few companies you’ll recognize as trustworthy.
These are all companies that understand the anatomy of trust, and their reviews and reputation demonstrate just that. With this clear understanding of trust, each of the businesses listed above has outdone their competitors.