How To Build Customer Trust Faster
For Customer Experience Professionals
How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust by Tom Champion June 12, 2017
Why Read This Report
Key Takeaways
Customer trust is still on the decline even as security budgets and compliance requirements continue to increase. Security and compliance are critical, but leaders are not taking a customercentric approach to implementing them — yielding ironic and absurd results. Simply telling your customers that you’re trustworthy isn’t enough to make them trust you; they need to feel it. This report shows customer experience (CX) pros how to translate the mechanics of trust into good CX so they don’t need to wait years to see the return on their backstage investments.
Understand Your Customers Before You Interact With Them Customers begin an interaction with you with a certain level of mistrust influenced by factors like past interactions, the media, and perceptions of your industry. Understand your customers’ context and design the experience accordingly. Show, Don’t Tell Customers don’t care how long your company has existed and don’t remember your passive association with a noble cause. Address trust issues throughout the customer journey. Focus On Consistency You won’t build trust with a lipstick solution. Find and repair root causes to build trust with customers whenever and wherever they interact with you.
forrester.com
For Customer Experience Professionals
How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust by Tom Champion with Fatemeh Khatibloo, Ryan Hart, Michael Barnes, Erna Esa, and Bill Nagel June 12, 2017
Table Of Contents
Related Research Documents
2 Organizations Miss The Mark On Customer Trust
Five Things CX Pros Should Know About Service Design
2 The Customer Experience Is A Critical Component Of Trust
The Mechanics Of Trust Winning In The Age Of The Customer
The Customer Experience Is The Front Line Of Transparency Effective Integrity Requires Customer Understanding Consistency Builds And Maintains Trust Recommendations
8 Reset Your Thinking Around Trust In Experiences 10 Supplemental Material
Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, MA 02140 USA +1 617-613-6000 | Fax: +1 617-613-5000 | forrester.com © 2017 Forrester Research, Inc. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378
For Customer Experience Professionals
June 12, 2017
How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
Organizations Miss The Mark On Customer Trust CEOs worldwide say that customer trust is at an all-time low and that it’s hurting growth.1 The most popular approach is to increase security and privacy budgets to invest in backstage capabilities.2 This is essential, but customers need to notice a positive change in their interactions with a brand or their perception of its trustworthiness won’t change. Boston Consulting Group found that customer suspicion about a firm’s data use practices, regardless of how sound they are, can cut company revenues by 10% to 25% and reduce customer spending by one-third in just one year.3 Companies and their CX pros are failing to translate their trust commitments into positive customer experiences. Instead, they’re taking bolt-on approaches that fail to capture the full value of their investments in the three trust drivers: transparency, integrity, and competence.4 They: ›› Create complexity to demonstrate transparency. In their efforts to be transparent at all costs, organizations are forgetting about usability. On one bank’s website, disclaimers took up 82% of a key product page, providing a less than appealing user experience. Poor usability and visual design are the strongest drivers of distrust in digital experiences — more than the lack of privacy statements, security statements, or detailed descriptive content.5 ›› Treat integrity like a PR function. Organizations make the mistake of relying on campaign messaging to show their trust commitment, failing to integrate their initiatives into interactions that add value. Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, which garnered the highest scores in Forrester’s Australia Customer Experience Index 2016, brings its commitment to community to life with a range of partnership credit cards. Customers can select from a list of causes, such as animal welfare, to which they make a small donation whenever they pay with their card. Customers experience the brand’s commitment to integrity at every point of sale.6 ›› Take a lazy approach to proving they’re competent. Organizations commonly emphasize the number of years they’ve been in existence as proof of their trustworthiness. At the same time, companies that are less than 10 years old, like Uber and Airbnb, depend on trust and have snatched market share from incumbents despite their makeshift rating systems and user-generated profiles. Having a strong track record of meeting customer needs is a key tenet of sustaining trust, but organizations can’t be passive and rely on quoting how long they’ve been in operation, what awards they’ve received, or where they’re first in the market.
The Customer Experience Is A Critical Component Of Trust CX pros have a critical role to play, whether that’s in a task force created to re-establish trust after a scandal or as part of an effort to solve long-standing trust issues. For optimal impact, CX pros should consider how to implement experience-led solutions along each of the three drivers of trust: transparency, integrity, and competence.
© 2017 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378
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For Customer Experience Professionals
June 12, 2017
How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
The Customer Experience Is The Front Line Of Transparency A knee-jerk reaction to the call to improve customer trust is to increase transparency. While transparency is a critical component of Forrester’s trust hierarchy, it’s not enough on its own (see Figure 1). CX pros need to help the organization manage the flow of stimuli based on what the customer wants and needs. Be aware that: ›› Customers already see more than you realize. Organizations are increasingly trying to identify the backstage processes and systems in the customer experience ecosystem that affect the external customer experience and then make those inner workings visible (see Figure 2).7 But firms must also weigh just how far to open the curtain, as everything that comes onstage demands its own experience strategy. JetBlue noticed that passengers were watching the ground crew work as it readied planes for travel and navigated them away from the gates. This made the airline realize that employees should load luggage with greater care and led JetBlue to introduce one of its experience grace notes: Once ground staff have navigated the plane away from the gate, they salute it in view of passengers.8 ›› Curated peer-to-peer experiences can be invaluable. Your customers already trust recommendations from family and friends more than they trust you.9 And they’re using dedicated brand review websites, which have raised the expectations customers have of reviews to new heights. Customers want to see how ratings change over time and need to relate their own personal experiences to those ratings. To help customers make the most of this trend, Australian wealth management firm BT Financial Group launched a central register where customers can access information about and provide feedback on BT’s financial advisors. The portal, Adviser View, allows customers to look up financial advisors by post code and area of specialty, view their qualifications, and read unfiltered customer reviews (see Figure 3). BT’s chief customer officer told us that this initiative sought to transform “the do-you-know-a-good-advisor Saturday barbecue conversation” into an always-on solution that would address a critical pain point in the early stages of the customer life cycle and become customers’ first port of call.
© 2017 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378
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For Customer Experience Professionals
June 12, 2017
How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
FIGURE 1 Forrester’s Trust Hierarchy
Competitive disruption
Selective differentiation
Competitive parity
The bare minimum
•
The company publicizes its transparency practices and engages consumers in meaningful dialogue about its corporate ethics and CSR programs.
•
The company stakes a moral claim in the market, forcing competitors to “level up” their own practices.
•
The company openly publishes multiple transparency reports and makes them available on mainstream consumer channels.
•
The company chooses specific topics around integrity to advocate for, and challenges competitors with them.
•
The company publishes data transparency reports, CSR practices, and/or ethical supply chain practices.
•
The company shows evidence of integrity in taking responsibility for its actions and mistakes.
•
The company meets basic levels of transparency about business practices, but goes no further.
•
The company expresses intentions clearly, but “trust” isn’t a clear brand value and isn’t used as a differentiator.
© 2017 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378
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For Customer Experience Professionals
June 12, 2017
How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
FIGURE 2 Gain Customer Trust By Making The Line Of Visibility Apparent
Elements above the line of visibility
Elements below the line of visibility
People and their thoughts and feelings Steps taken and time spent waiting Touchpoints including tools and policies
© 2017 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378
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For Customer Experience Professionals
June 12, 2017
How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
FIGURE 3 BT Financial Group’s Advisor View Includes Customer Ratings And Feedback
Source: BT Financial Group
Effective Integrity Requires Customer Understanding Doing right by the customer requires more than just a passive association with a cause. Customer experience pros can dive deep into the customer’s mindset to understand what role the organization can play to demonstrate an authentic commitment to the customer. For example: ›› Customers enter an interaction fully loaded. Your customers have preconceived notions about your brand or industry, nurtured over years of direct personal experience with you or your competitors and secondhand reports from sources like their friends and the media. CX pros can dive deep into what constitutes this pre-interaction state to keep customers in the customer journey longer — or to get them to engage at all.10 The New South Wales (NSW) police force rolled out a training program for its officers to improve service for LGBTI citizens, who can be reluctant to seek police help. As one superintendent put it: “To go to the police about a crime that has involved prejudice or bias because of sexual orientation requires a great deal of courage and trust in the police that you’re dealing with.”11 One solution was to give trained NSW police officers highly visible pink badges, lowering the barrier to engagement by clearly signaling which police officers were ready to serve LGBTI community members.
© 2017 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378
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For Customer Experience Professionals
June 12, 2017
How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
›› Simplicity works. Companies commonly attempt to demonstrate expertise by speaking above the customer’s level of literacy to dazzle them into buying. But today, customers will defect to an organization that speaks to them on their level in plain language that requires no effort to understand.12 In complicated industries like banking, wealth management, and insurance, CX leaders are stepping up their customer education for deeper engagement. One chief customer officer confided to us that the firm’s old sales conversation wasn’t working, so it developed a needs-based conversation model. In the new model, the sales agent spends the first meeting asking open-ended exploratory questions and swapping stories with the customer. In this way, the customer gains understanding of the industry through a natural, relevant conversation and builds trust with the sales agent. Consistency Builds And Maintains Trust Customer experience professionals don’t naturally think of operational excellence as a key aspect of their role. However, cross-functional collaboration with the rest of the business is critical to drive consistent experiences. For example: ›› Frontline employees need to keep their promises. Frontline employees struggle to set customer expectations when they can’t provide realistic time frames or give detailed updates on a process. Organizations are empowering the front line by giving them greater visibility into operational drivers — which means disentangling complex backstage ecosystems. An Asia Pacific insurer found that turnaround times for the underwriting process were so variable that frontline employees could not provide helpful time frames to customers. The CX team conducted a series of cross-functional workshops to find the root cause of the variability and stabilize time frames that the firm could communicate confidently. The team found that the variability was due to late risk profiling, outdated collaboration platforms, and distributed governance — disparate problems that wouldn’t have surfaced in silos. ›› Customers trust a consistent journey over big highs. Organizations can build trust faster by decreasing variability in the overall journey than by trying to impress with key moments of delight. However, this approach will only work if the overall CX strategy is aligned. The customer strategy leader of a global bank took a trust-first approach to reinventing the account signup experience. She mapped out the key touchpoints and brought the neglected moments up to the same level of quality as other parts of the journey. Her team invested in such initiatives as a new interface for in-branch kiosks and a creative refresh of dense regulatory documents. This approach to prioritize consistency was a sharp departure from her first hypothesis: to refresh the mobile app.
© 2017 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378
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For Customer Experience Professionals
June 12, 2017
How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
Recommendations
Reset Your Thinking Around Trust In Experiences There’s no substitute for flawless ethics, security, privacy and compliance — but for optimal impact, customers need to perceive your trust commitment in their interactions with you. Organizations that prepare to adopt the appropriate storefront trust solutions now can reap the benefits of lucrative longterm relationships with their customers. As a CX professional, to take a proactive approach to building trust through the customer experience, you need to understand: ›› The extent to which customers should trust you. You’re a business seeking revenue — customers are not meant to trust you wholeheartedly. Assess how sales-oriented your organization and frontline staff are and offset this with targeted solutions.13 Allianz Global Assistance found that a large segment of the market was not using its traditional subscription model, so it introduced a new on-demand offering. In this new business model, customers only pay for assistance when they need it; this overcame a key barrier to engagement for the target segment. In essence, it channeled customer interactions toward the intersection of trust and value. ›› What your trust weaknesses are. Leaders use terms like “transparency” and “integrity” interchangeably as the fix-all following trust-breaking scandals. But this can derail all of your subsequent plans unless you’re clear on the root cause of your trust problems. Fast-food chain Chipotle endured a string of food poisoning scandals due to a problem somewhere along its vast supply chain. The trust deficit here was around competence, not transparency or integrity — as no one would assume that Chipotle secretly made its customers sick on purpose. This informed the chain’s decision to gain greater visibility and control of its supply chain network and communicate this to customers in context.14 ›› How information asymmetry affects you. Companies used to control all of the information, but ubiquitous devices have shifted this power to customers.15 Information asymmetry is a key driver of distrust, according to Kent Grayson of Northwestern University, who leads The Trust Project. To restore balance, more organizations have been embedding education as a key principle. HCF, an Australian health insurer and Net Promoter Score leader, reinvented its Get a Quote customer journey with a refreshed content strategy.16 Jargon is no longer clumsily reworded or delegated to a glossary or hint text; rather, HCF progressively explains it to customers to build their knowledge of insurance and position HCF as an expert open to imparting information (see Figure 4). ›› Where trust is located on your broader strategic slate. You’ll probably find the word “trust” — or, worse, “trusted advisor” — mentioned throughout your company’s strategy documents and annual reports. Before acting, gauge how authentic this promise truly is: Has the term been thrown around without understanding what it means, or is it genuinely one of the most important attributes of your brand?17
© 2017 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378
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For Customer Experience Professionals
June 12, 2017
How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
FIGURE 4 HCF Progressively Educates Customers
Source: HCF website
© 2017 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378
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For Customer Experience Professionals
June 12, 2017
How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
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Supplemental Material Survey Methodology The Forrester Data Consumer Technographics North American Online Benchmark Survey (Part 1), 2017, was fielded in February and March 2017. This online survey included 58,000 respondents in the US and 6,011 respondents in Canada between the ages of 18 and 88. For results based on a randomly chosen sample of this size, there is 95% confidence that the results have a statistical precision of plus or minus 0.4% of what they would be if the entire population of US online adults (defined as those online weekly or more often) had been surveyed and plus or minus 1.3% of what they would be if the entire population of Canadian online adults had been surveyed. Forrester weighted the data by age, gender, income, region, and broadband adoption to demographically represent the US and Canadian online adult populations. The survey sample size, when weighted, was 58,000 in the US and 6,011 in Canada. (Note: Weighted sample sizes can be
© 2017 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378
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For Customer Experience Professionals
June 12, 2017
How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
different from the actual number of respondents to account for individuals generally underrepresented in online panels.) Ipsos Observer fielded this survey on behalf of Forrester. Survey respondent incentives include points redeemable for gift certificates. Companies Interviewed For This Report We would like to thank the individuals from the following companies who generously gave their time during the research for this report. Allianz Global Assistance
Northwestern University
BT Financial Group
ProductReview.com.au
McKinsey & Company
Endnotes PwC’s 2017 CEO survey found that 69% of CEOs think that it’s harder for businesses to gain and retain people’s trust in an increasingly digitalized world. This compares with 12% of CEOs thinking that public trust was a problem prior to the global financial crisis. Source: “Gaining from connectivity without losing trust,” PwC, 2017 (http://www.pwc.com/ gx/en/ceo-agenda/ceosurvey/2017/gx/trust.html).
1
Forrester research outlines these three drivers. CISOs got a larger piece of the IT pie in 2016, with security budgets accounting for a record 28% of IT budgets for organizations with more than 1,000 employees. At the same time, board-level attention and consumers’ focus on privacy are coinciding to inch the CISO toward a position as one of the most important executives in the enterprise. See the Forrester report “The Mechanics Of Trust.”
2
See the Forrester report “Security Budgets 2017: Increases Help But Remain Reactionary.” Source: “BCG Technology Advantage,” BCG, October 2016 (http://media-publications.bcg.com/tech-adv-oct-2016/ BCG-Technology-Advantage-Oct-2016.pdf).
3
See the Forrester report “The Mechanics Of Trust.”
4
If your site’s visual design is cluttered, if you use intrusive pop-ups, or if you subject shoppers to disorienting and surprising interactions, expect them to be less likely to trust your site. Studies show that the usability and visual design of a site influences trust more than privacy and security policies.
5
A study of 200 participants identified that distrust is mostly caused by the graphical (e.g., complex layout) and structural (e.g., pop-ups) design issues of a website. In contrast, trust is based on social factors such as reviews or recommendations by friends. Source: Mirjam Seckler, Silvia Heinz, Seamus Forde, Alexandre N. Tuch, and Klaus Opwis, “Trust and distrust on the web: User experiences and website characteristics,” Science Direct, April 2015 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563214006827). Web usability is foundational in helping customers learn to trust a site. Basic usability is even more important than privacy and security statements, detailed content about service-level commitments, performance speed, and site aesthetics. Source: Jun Chen and Sally Dibb, “Consumer trust in the online retail context: Exploring the antecedents and consequences,” Psychology & Marketing, March 10, 2010 (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mar.20334/abstract). See the Forrester report “Best Practices For Retail Sites: User Experience Review, 2016.” Source: “Partnership credit cards,” Bendigo Bank (https://www.bendigobank.com.au/public/personal/credit-cards/ rspca-credit-cards/partnership-credit-cards).
6
© 2017 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378
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For Customer Experience Professionals
June 12, 2017
How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
See the Forrester report “Five Things CX Pros Should Know About Service Design.”
7
This small act connects the ground crew to the passengers and humanizes them — an important design principle for JetBlue, whose tagline at the time was “Bringing the humanity back to air travel.” See the Forrester report “CX Pros Are Blind To The Line Of Visibility.”
8
30% of US online adults agree that they rely a lot on recommendations from family or friends when making purchases. The percentages are higher among the 18-to-24 and 25-to-34 age groups (41% and 45%, respectively) as well as Forrester’s empowered-customer Progressive Pioneers segment (60%). By comparison, only 16% of US online adults read, watch, or listen to posts by companies or brands on social networks. Source: Forrester Data Consumer Technographics North American Online Benchmark Survey (Part 1), 2017.
9
10
However, we believe that all products and services can aim to evoke passionate emotions and leverage the power of anticipation to elevate their CX throughout all three acts of the customer’s journey with your brand. See the Forrester report “The Dawn Of Anticipatory CX.”
11
Source: Murray Dixon, “The benefits of embracing sexuality and gender diversity: Lessons learned from the Australian police,” Deloitte, August 29, 2016 (http://blog.deloitte.com.au/diversity-inclusion/2016/08/29/benefits-embracingsexuality-gender-diversity-lessons-learned-australian-police/#.WFM42VV97IU).
12
One of Forrester’s universal drivers for the CX Index that cuts across geographies and industries is “speaks in plain language.”
13
One popular framework for balancing business goals with trust efforts is the Trust Equation developed by Charles H. Green. Source: “Understanding The Trust Equation,” Trusted Advisor (http://trustedadvisor.com/why-trust-matters/ understanding-trust/understanding-the-trust-equation).
14
Source: James Surowiecki, “Can Chipotle Recover From Food Poisoning?” The New Yorker, December 10, 2015 (http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/can-chipotle-recover-from-food-poisoning).
15
See the Forrester report “Winning In The Age Of The Customer.”
16
HCF is a leader in Net Promoter Score in Australia. Source: Katrina Bradley and Richard Hatherall, “The powerful economics of customer loyalty in Australia,” Bain & Company, July 29, 2013 (http://www.bain.com/offices/australia/ en_us/publications/articles/the-powerful-economics-of-customer-loyalty-in-Australia-au.aspx). Net Promoter and NPS are registered service marks, and Net Promoter Score is a service mark, of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.
17
Source: Michaela Ross, “SeaWorld Shuts Down Killer Whale Shows, Bowing to Criticism,” Bloomberg, March 17, 2016 (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-17/seaworld-shuts-down-killer-whale-shows-in-wake-ofblackfish).
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12
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How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust by Tom Champion June 12, 2017
Why Read This Report
Key Takeaways
Customer trust is still on the decline even as security budgets and compliance requirements continue to increase. Security and compliance are critical, but leaders are not taking a customercentric approach to implementing them — yielding ironic and absurd results. Simply telling your customers that you’re trustworthy isn’t enough to make them trust you; they need to feel it. This report shows customer experience (CX) pros how to translate the mechanics of trust into good CX so they don’t need to wait years to see the return on their backstage investments.
Understand Your Customers Before You Interact With Them Customers begin an interaction with you with a certain level of mistrust influenced by factors like past interactions, the media, and perceptions of your industry. Understand your customers’ context and design the experience accordingly. Show, Don’t Tell Customers don’t care how long your company has existed and don’t remember your passive association with a noble cause. Address trust issues throughout the customer journey. Focus On Consistency You won’t build trust with a lipstick solution. Find and repair root causes to build trust with customers whenever and wherever they interact with you.
forrester.com
For Customer Experience Professionals
How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust by Tom Champion with Fatemeh Khatibloo, Ryan Hart, Michael Barnes, Erna Esa, and Bill Nagel June 12, 2017
Table Of Contents
Related Research Documents
2 Organizations Miss The Mark On Customer Trust
Five Things CX Pros Should Know About Service Design
2 The Customer Experience Is A Critical Component Of Trust
The Mechanics Of Trust Winning In The Age Of The Customer
The Customer Experience Is The Front Line Of Transparency Effective Integrity Requires Customer Understanding Consistency Builds And Maintains Trust Recommendations
8 Reset Your Thinking Around Trust In Experiences 10 Supplemental Material
Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, MA 02140 USA +1 617-613-6000 | Fax: +1 617-613-5000 | forrester.com © 2017 Forrester Research, Inc. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378
For Customer Experience Professionals
June 12, 2017
How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
Organizations Miss The Mark On Customer Trust CEOs worldwide say that customer trust is at an all-time low and that it’s hurting growth.1 The most popular approach is to increase security and privacy budgets to invest in backstage capabilities.2 This is essential, but customers need to notice a positive change in their interactions with a brand or their perception of its trustworthiness won’t change. Boston Consulting Group found that customer suspicion about a firm’s data use practices, regardless of how sound they are, can cut company revenues by 10% to 25% and reduce customer spending by one-third in just one year.3 Companies and their CX pros are failing to translate their trust commitments into positive customer experiences. Instead, they’re taking bolt-on approaches that fail to capture the full value of their investments in the three trust drivers: transparency, integrity, and competence.4 They: ›› Create complexity to demonstrate transparency. In their efforts to be transparent at all costs, organizations are forgetting about usability. On one bank’s website, disclaimers took up 82% of a key product page, providing a less than appealing user experience. Poor usability and visual design are the strongest drivers of distrust in digital experiences — more than the lack of privacy statements, security statements, or detailed descriptive content.5 ›› Treat integrity like a PR function. Organizations make the mistake of relying on campaign messaging to show their trust commitment, failing to integrate their initiatives into interactions that add value. Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, which garnered the highest scores in Forrester’s Australia Customer Experience Index 2016, brings its commitment to community to life with a range of partnership credit cards. Customers can select from a list of causes, such as animal welfare, to which they make a small donation whenever they pay with their card. Customers experience the brand’s commitment to integrity at every point of sale.6 ›› Take a lazy approach to proving they’re competent. Organizations commonly emphasize the number of years they’ve been in existence as proof of their trustworthiness. At the same time, companies that are less than 10 years old, like Uber and Airbnb, depend on trust and have snatched market share from incumbents despite their makeshift rating systems and user-generated profiles. Having a strong track record of meeting customer needs is a key tenet of sustaining trust, but organizations can’t be passive and rely on quoting how long they’ve been in operation, what awards they’ve received, or where they’re first in the market.
The Customer Experience Is A Critical Component Of Trust CX pros have a critical role to play, whether that’s in a task force created to re-establish trust after a scandal or as part of an effort to solve long-standing trust issues. For optimal impact, CX pros should consider how to implement experience-led solutions along each of the three drivers of trust: transparency, integrity, and competence.
© 2017 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378
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For Customer Experience Professionals
June 12, 2017
How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
The Customer Experience Is The Front Line Of Transparency A knee-jerk reaction to the call to improve customer trust is to increase transparency. While transparency is a critical component of Forrester’s trust hierarchy, it’s not enough on its own (see Figure 1). CX pros need to help the organization manage the flow of stimuli based on what the customer wants and needs. Be aware that: ›› Customers already see more than you realize. Organizations are increasingly trying to identify the backstage processes and systems in the customer experience ecosystem that affect the external customer experience and then make those inner workings visible (see Figure 2).7 But firms must also weigh just how far to open the curtain, as everything that comes onstage demands its own experience strategy. JetBlue noticed that passengers were watching the ground crew work as it readied planes for travel and navigated them away from the gates. This made the airline realize that employees should load luggage with greater care and led JetBlue to introduce one of its experience grace notes: Once ground staff have navigated the plane away from the gate, they salute it in view of passengers.8 ›› Curated peer-to-peer experiences can be invaluable. Your customers already trust recommendations from family and friends more than they trust you.9 And they’re using dedicated brand review websites, which have raised the expectations customers have of reviews to new heights. Customers want to see how ratings change over time and need to relate their own personal experiences to those ratings. To help customers make the most of this trend, Australian wealth management firm BT Financial Group launched a central register where customers can access information about and provide feedback on BT’s financial advisors. The portal, Adviser View, allows customers to look up financial advisors by post code and area of specialty, view their qualifications, and read unfiltered customer reviews (see Figure 3). BT’s chief customer officer told us that this initiative sought to transform “the do-you-know-a-good-advisor Saturday barbecue conversation” into an always-on solution that would address a critical pain point in the early stages of the customer life cycle and become customers’ first port of call.
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How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
FIGURE 1 Forrester’s Trust Hierarchy
Competitive disruption
Selective differentiation
Competitive parity
The bare minimum
•
The company publicizes its transparency practices and engages consumers in meaningful dialogue about its corporate ethics and CSR programs.
•
The company stakes a moral claim in the market, forcing competitors to “level up” their own practices.
•
The company openly publishes multiple transparency reports and makes them available on mainstream consumer channels.
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The company chooses specific topics around integrity to advocate for, and challenges competitors with them.
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The company publishes data transparency reports, CSR practices, and/or ethical supply chain practices.
•
The company shows evidence of integrity in taking responsibility for its actions and mistakes.
•
The company meets basic levels of transparency about business practices, but goes no further.
•
The company expresses intentions clearly, but “trust” isn’t a clear brand value and isn’t used as a differentiator.
© 2017 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378
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How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
FIGURE 2 Gain Customer Trust By Making The Line Of Visibility Apparent
Elements above the line of visibility
Elements below the line of visibility
People and their thoughts and feelings Steps taken and time spent waiting Touchpoints including tools and policies
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How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
FIGURE 3 BT Financial Group’s Advisor View Includes Customer Ratings And Feedback
Source: BT Financial Group
Effective Integrity Requires Customer Understanding Doing right by the customer requires more than just a passive association with a cause. Customer experience pros can dive deep into the customer’s mindset to understand what role the organization can play to demonstrate an authentic commitment to the customer. For example: ›› Customers enter an interaction fully loaded. Your customers have preconceived notions about your brand or industry, nurtured over years of direct personal experience with you or your competitors and secondhand reports from sources like their friends and the media. CX pros can dive deep into what constitutes this pre-interaction state to keep customers in the customer journey longer — or to get them to engage at all.10 The New South Wales (NSW) police force rolled out a training program for its officers to improve service for LGBTI citizens, who can be reluctant to seek police help. As one superintendent put it: “To go to the police about a crime that has involved prejudice or bias because of sexual orientation requires a great deal of courage and trust in the police that you’re dealing with.”11 One solution was to give trained NSW police officers highly visible pink badges, lowering the barrier to engagement by clearly signaling which police officers were ready to serve LGBTI community members.
© 2017 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378
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How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
›› Simplicity works. Companies commonly attempt to demonstrate expertise by speaking above the customer’s level of literacy to dazzle them into buying. But today, customers will defect to an organization that speaks to them on their level in plain language that requires no effort to understand.12 In complicated industries like banking, wealth management, and insurance, CX leaders are stepping up their customer education for deeper engagement. One chief customer officer confided to us that the firm’s old sales conversation wasn’t working, so it developed a needs-based conversation model. In the new model, the sales agent spends the first meeting asking open-ended exploratory questions and swapping stories with the customer. In this way, the customer gains understanding of the industry through a natural, relevant conversation and builds trust with the sales agent. Consistency Builds And Maintains Trust Customer experience professionals don’t naturally think of operational excellence as a key aspect of their role. However, cross-functional collaboration with the rest of the business is critical to drive consistent experiences. For example: ›› Frontline employees need to keep their promises. Frontline employees struggle to set customer expectations when they can’t provide realistic time frames or give detailed updates on a process. Organizations are empowering the front line by giving them greater visibility into operational drivers — which means disentangling complex backstage ecosystems. An Asia Pacific insurer found that turnaround times for the underwriting process were so variable that frontline employees could not provide helpful time frames to customers. The CX team conducted a series of cross-functional workshops to find the root cause of the variability and stabilize time frames that the firm could communicate confidently. The team found that the variability was due to late risk profiling, outdated collaboration platforms, and distributed governance — disparate problems that wouldn’t have surfaced in silos. ›› Customers trust a consistent journey over big highs. Organizations can build trust faster by decreasing variability in the overall journey than by trying to impress with key moments of delight. However, this approach will only work if the overall CX strategy is aligned. The customer strategy leader of a global bank took a trust-first approach to reinventing the account signup experience. She mapped out the key touchpoints and brought the neglected moments up to the same level of quality as other parts of the journey. Her team invested in such initiatives as a new interface for in-branch kiosks and a creative refresh of dense regulatory documents. This approach to prioritize consistency was a sharp departure from her first hypothesis: to refresh the mobile app.
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How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
Recommendations
Reset Your Thinking Around Trust In Experiences There’s no substitute for flawless ethics, security, privacy and compliance — but for optimal impact, customers need to perceive your trust commitment in their interactions with you. Organizations that prepare to adopt the appropriate storefront trust solutions now can reap the benefits of lucrative longterm relationships with their customers. As a CX professional, to take a proactive approach to building trust through the customer experience, you need to understand: ›› The extent to which customers should trust you. You’re a business seeking revenue — customers are not meant to trust you wholeheartedly. Assess how sales-oriented your organization and frontline staff are and offset this with targeted solutions.13 Allianz Global Assistance found that a large segment of the market was not using its traditional subscription model, so it introduced a new on-demand offering. In this new business model, customers only pay for assistance when they need it; this overcame a key barrier to engagement for the target segment. In essence, it channeled customer interactions toward the intersection of trust and value. ›› What your trust weaknesses are. Leaders use terms like “transparency” and “integrity” interchangeably as the fix-all following trust-breaking scandals. But this can derail all of your subsequent plans unless you’re clear on the root cause of your trust problems. Fast-food chain Chipotle endured a string of food poisoning scandals due to a problem somewhere along its vast supply chain. The trust deficit here was around competence, not transparency or integrity — as no one would assume that Chipotle secretly made its customers sick on purpose. This informed the chain’s decision to gain greater visibility and control of its supply chain network and communicate this to customers in context.14 ›› How information asymmetry affects you. Companies used to control all of the information, but ubiquitous devices have shifted this power to customers.15 Information asymmetry is a key driver of distrust, according to Kent Grayson of Northwestern University, who leads The Trust Project. To restore balance, more organizations have been embedding education as a key principle. HCF, an Australian health insurer and Net Promoter Score leader, reinvented its Get a Quote customer journey with a refreshed content strategy.16 Jargon is no longer clumsily reworded or delegated to a glossary or hint text; rather, HCF progressively explains it to customers to build their knowledge of insurance and position HCF as an expert open to imparting information (see Figure 4). ›› Where trust is located on your broader strategic slate. You’ll probably find the word “trust” — or, worse, “trusted advisor” — mentioned throughout your company’s strategy documents and annual reports. Before acting, gauge how authentic this promise truly is: Has the term been thrown around without understanding what it means, or is it genuinely one of the most important attributes of your brand?17
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How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
FIGURE 4 HCF Progressively Educates Customers
Source: HCF website
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How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
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Supplemental Material Survey Methodology The Forrester Data Consumer Technographics North American Online Benchmark Survey (Part 1), 2017, was fielded in February and March 2017. This online survey included 58,000 respondents in the US and 6,011 respondents in Canada between the ages of 18 and 88. For results based on a randomly chosen sample of this size, there is 95% confidence that the results have a statistical precision of plus or minus 0.4% of what they would be if the entire population of US online adults (defined as those online weekly or more often) had been surveyed and plus or minus 1.3% of what they would be if the entire population of Canadian online adults had been surveyed. Forrester weighted the data by age, gender, income, region, and broadband adoption to demographically represent the US and Canadian online adult populations. The survey sample size, when weighted, was 58,000 in the US and 6,011 in Canada. (Note: Weighted sample sizes can be
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How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
different from the actual number of respondents to account for individuals generally underrepresented in online panels.) Ipsos Observer fielded this survey on behalf of Forrester. Survey respondent incentives include points redeemable for gift certificates. Companies Interviewed For This Report We would like to thank the individuals from the following companies who generously gave their time during the research for this report. Allianz Global Assistance
Northwestern University
BT Financial Group
ProductReview.com.au
McKinsey & Company
Endnotes PwC’s 2017 CEO survey found that 69% of CEOs think that it’s harder for businesses to gain and retain people’s trust in an increasingly digitalized world. This compares with 12% of CEOs thinking that public trust was a problem prior to the global financial crisis. Source: “Gaining from connectivity without losing trust,” PwC, 2017 (http://www.pwc.com/ gx/en/ceo-agenda/ceosurvey/2017/gx/trust.html).
1
Forrester research outlines these three drivers. CISOs got a larger piece of the IT pie in 2016, with security budgets accounting for a record 28% of IT budgets for organizations with more than 1,000 employees. At the same time, board-level attention and consumers’ focus on privacy are coinciding to inch the CISO toward a position as one of the most important executives in the enterprise. See the Forrester report “The Mechanics Of Trust.”
2
See the Forrester report “Security Budgets 2017: Increases Help But Remain Reactionary.” Source: “BCG Technology Advantage,” BCG, October 2016 (http://media-publications.bcg.com/tech-adv-oct-2016/ BCG-Technology-Advantage-Oct-2016.pdf).
3
See the Forrester report “The Mechanics Of Trust.”
4
If your site’s visual design is cluttered, if you use intrusive pop-ups, or if you subject shoppers to disorienting and surprising interactions, expect them to be less likely to trust your site. Studies show that the usability and visual design of a site influences trust more than privacy and security policies.
5
A study of 200 participants identified that distrust is mostly caused by the graphical (e.g., complex layout) and structural (e.g., pop-ups) design issues of a website. In contrast, trust is based on social factors such as reviews or recommendations by friends. Source: Mirjam Seckler, Silvia Heinz, Seamus Forde, Alexandre N. Tuch, and Klaus Opwis, “Trust and distrust on the web: User experiences and website characteristics,” Science Direct, April 2015 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563214006827). Web usability is foundational in helping customers learn to trust a site. Basic usability is even more important than privacy and security statements, detailed content about service-level commitments, performance speed, and site aesthetics. Source: Jun Chen and Sally Dibb, “Consumer trust in the online retail context: Exploring the antecedents and consequences,” Psychology & Marketing, March 10, 2010 (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mar.20334/abstract). See the Forrester report “Best Practices For Retail Sites: User Experience Review, 2016.” Source: “Partnership credit cards,” Bendigo Bank (https://www.bendigobank.com.au/public/personal/credit-cards/ rspca-credit-cards/partnership-credit-cards).
6
© 2017 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378
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How To Build Customer Trust Faster Why And How To Use The Customer Experience To Earn Customer Trust
See the Forrester report “Five Things CX Pros Should Know About Service Design.”
7
This small act connects the ground crew to the passengers and humanizes them — an important design principle for JetBlue, whose tagline at the time was “Bringing the humanity back to air travel.” See the Forrester report “CX Pros Are Blind To The Line Of Visibility.”
8
30% of US online adults agree that they rely a lot on recommendations from family or friends when making purchases. The percentages are higher among the 18-to-24 and 25-to-34 age groups (41% and 45%, respectively) as well as Forrester’s empowered-customer Progressive Pioneers segment (60%). By comparison, only 16% of US online adults read, watch, or listen to posts by companies or brands on social networks. Source: Forrester Data Consumer Technographics North American Online Benchmark Survey (Part 1), 2017.
9
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However, we believe that all products and services can aim to evoke passionate emotions and leverage the power of anticipation to elevate their CX throughout all three acts of the customer’s journey with your brand. See the Forrester report “The Dawn Of Anticipatory CX.”
11
Source: Murray Dixon, “The benefits of embracing sexuality and gender diversity: Lessons learned from the Australian police,” Deloitte, August 29, 2016 (http://blog.deloitte.com.au/diversity-inclusion/2016/08/29/benefits-embracingsexuality-gender-diversity-lessons-learned-australian-police/#.WFM42VV97IU).
12
One of Forrester’s universal drivers for the CX Index that cuts across geographies and industries is “speaks in plain language.”
13
One popular framework for balancing business goals with trust efforts is the Trust Equation developed by Charles H. Green. Source: “Understanding The Trust Equation,” Trusted Advisor (http://trustedadvisor.com/why-trust-matters/ understanding-trust/understanding-the-trust-equation).
14
Source: James Surowiecki, “Can Chipotle Recover From Food Poisoning?” The New Yorker, December 10, 2015 (http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/can-chipotle-recover-from-food-poisoning).
15
See the Forrester report “Winning In The Age Of The Customer.”
16
HCF is a leader in Net Promoter Score in Australia. Source: Katrina Bradley and Richard Hatherall, “The powerful economics of customer loyalty in Australia,” Bain & Company, July 29, 2013 (http://www.bain.com/offices/australia/ en_us/publications/articles/the-powerful-economics-of-customer-loyalty-in-Australia-au.aspx). Net Promoter and NPS are registered service marks, and Net Promoter Score is a service mark, of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.
17
Source: Michaela Ross, “SeaWorld Shuts Down Killer Whale Shows, Bowing to Criticism,” Bloomberg, March 17, 2016 (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-17/seaworld-shuts-down-killer-whale-shows-in-wake-ofblackfish).
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