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Building Client Trust During a Crisis

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As the Novel Coronavirus pandemic disrupts business across the globe, companies are scrambling to  assess and mitigate the near-term impact to their business. One of our clients recently shared an email he sent to his team of client relationship partners, reminding them to take a trust-building approach: reach out with information, but foremost with humanity.

Dear [name],

Last week we sent some information to share with your clients regarding COVID19. In addition to the technical support information that we should be sharing, I want to reinforce the importance of communicating directly with our clients on a personal level as well. While it is natural, and even responsible, for us to see how we can support their business, now can be the defining moment to make personal connections and establish long-lasting trust.

While there will be immediate opportunities to help clients with risk assessments, supply chain optimisation, cost reduction and resource augmentation, etc., the objective of contacting them TODAY should be to see how COVID19 is affecting their job, but more importantly to simply see how they are doing personally. Some questions to consider:  

  • How is COVID19 impacting their day-to-day life?  
  • How is this impacting how they are making near-term business decisions?
  • How is this impacting their direct reports and completing short term projects?
  • What other pressures is this putting on them, both professionally and personally?
  • How is this impacting them and their family?

During our conference last June, Charlie Green talked to us about what we can do to become our client’s Trusted Advisors. If you recall the “Trust Equation”, two key elements to establish trustworthiness include increasing “intimacy” while lowering our own “self-orientation”. Taking the time to personally call your clients – and not profiteering during crisis – is a good step towards gaining their trust and will pay dividends in the future.

Now is the time to speak with your clients and talk to them as a person and not as a target/fee source.

 Kind regards,

 Scott

While Scott specifically highlights intimacy and self-orientation, two factors of trustworthiness found in the trust equation, this email is also an excellent illustration of the four trust principles in practice.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Realms of Trust and Manifestations of Trust

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Most would agree that trust is a hot topic just now.  That’s about the only thing agreed upon about trust, however.  We can’t even decide what it means.

I wrote a post last week called Trust, Trusting and Trustworthiness.  I suggested that much writing about trust confuses these three manifestations.

Think of that post as Managing Trust Part I — Trust Manifestations. Think of this as Managing Trust Part II — Trust Realms.

There are three trust realms in all: interpersonal trust, organizational/institutional trust, and social trust.

The realms of trust are well known to academic trust researchers, not so much to business people. They do make simple common sense, however.

1. Interpersonal trust

Interpersonal trust deals with one-on-one dynamics. Most of my work has focused in this area. It’s the stuff of relationships, selling, advisory businesses, and personal risk-taking.

2. Organizational and institutional trust

This form of trust covers a wide range of issues: the organizational environment conditioning interpersonal trust relationships, the trust of individuals in their organizations and institutions, and the nature of trust relationships between organizations themselves.

Surveys that measure “trust in government” can shift dramatically and quickly, with the election of an Obama, or the humbling of an SEC, for example. In these respects—speed and personalization—organizational trust resembles personal trust. But it also deals with organizational cultures and values—undeniably group phenomena.

3. Social trust

Social trust deals with the generalized beliefs individuals hold about “other people."  Think under what conditions you’re likely to lock your car doors. Unlike the other two realms, this trust doesn’t deal with people as individuals; also, it tends to change only glacially, perhaps across generations.

If we array the realms of trust against the manifestations of trust, as shown below, we can begin to have a structured conversation about trust.

Trust Realms and Trust Manifestations

Manifestation/Realm

 Trusting

Being trusted

State of Trust
Personal      
Organizational      
Social      

 Until then, we are going to have vague, or circular, or meaningless discussions about trust.

When Steven H.R. Covey talks about how trust affects speed and cost, he is largely talking about the manifestion dimension—the presence or absence of a state of trust. But is he talking about the state of personal trust? Or organizational? Or cultural/social?

Gatehouse, a UK communications consultancy, says “business is facing a massive and global crisis of trust right now.”  But what are they talking about?  Which manifestation?  Which realm?  Or are we descending into an inevitable and inescapable downward spiral of rampant anarchy? 

Do they mean that individuals are less trusting of business? Or that more businesses are untrustworthy? Or that the state of economic uncertainty has rendered the state of trust lower?

Paul Seaman’s review of the Edelman Trust Surveys (Would you trust a trust survey?) does a nice job of taking apart the apparent meaning of trust survey data.  A small example: trust in banks is down, trust in government is up: does that mean we want the government to take over banks?

These are not word games.  Intelligent policy formulation depends on being able to clearly define problems. For example:

• When is structural regulation preferable to greater enforcement?
• For what trust issues is transparency an appropriate remedy?
• Do we have any institutions that teach the personal manifestation of trusting?
• If you change personal and organizational trustworthiness, do you have to worry about social trust?

We’re entering a period where trust has gone viral; it’s got buzz. We’re about to see more survey data, telling us with greater and greater precision whether doctors are gaining on nurses in trust ratings, who has the most trusted brand name, and whether trust in Romanian economists went up or down in October. 

Watch out for conflicts of interest: who’s paying for a ranking of trustworthy companies?   What problem is being solved?  What issues are being addressed?

Get ready for many tales, full of sound and fury, signifying—well, just what? That is the question.