Our research shows that brand leaders and consumers are generally aligned on the importance of trust. However, there is significant misalignment when it to comes to how (and how well) trust is actually fostered. While the art of building trust can be complex, many brands struggle with a basic disconnect between what they value and what they deliver—that is, between their intent and their competence.
Yet only 35% of consumers said it is very easy to do business with the brands they trust most.
Because even as brands work diligently to make it easy to do business with them, they too often focus on the wrong approaches. When asked to identify the most important factors that make it easy to do business with their brand, B2C executives only correctly identified one out of the top four factors that matter most to consumers—and underestimated the importance of top factors by an average gap of 21 percentage points.
Other key disconnects between leader perceptions and consumer values regarding the mechanics of trust emerged in the research. For example, consumers said the most important factors in building trust are quality products / services and fair prices— core attributes of reliability and capability. Almost three in four consumers said those ingredients are critical to building their trust in a brand.
Across the four signals of trust, disconnects appear between what brand leaders say they value and do, and what consumers say they experience
TrustID signal scores range from -/+100 and represent a net percent of respondents who agree that their brand (in the case of B2C leaders) or trusted brands (in the case of consumers) exhibit the qualities of that signal. The score is calculated by subtracting the percent who strongly disagree or disagree from the percent who strongly agree or agree.
Our research also found that when trust is damaged, brand leaders are especially misaligned with consumer preferences regarding the most important actions that help rebuild trust. Brand leaders rank “provide outstanding customer service” and “communicate proactively about the problem and the resolution” as the most important ways to rebuild trust—missing and significantly underestimating the importance of the three most-important actions in the eyes of consumers: providing refunds, offering replacements / exchanges, and admitting the mistake and apologizing.
This disconnect, as with others, is illuminating—and an area of opportunity for brands to create meaningful improvements that reinforce trust. Brand leaders focusing on outstanding customer service and proactive communication are, in essence, prioritizing the intent of humanity and transparency—but consumers are focused on the specific, real- world signs of competence that matter to them.
