Dhiraj Gupta: “Customers want to be heard, acknowledged and rewarded. They know what they want, they want to do it their own way, and that too, without talking to the customer support hotline. This rebuilding of Trust is the key to building a successful business, online.”
2 Replies to “And Offline, Too”
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Chris
I am not sure whether we over-emphasise trust.
In today’s business model, companies generally make profits when customers receive fewer expensive to provide benefits. Business is a zero-sum game. So customers are right not to trust the companies they do business with. Trust is an alternative to not having sufficient control.
But a lot of tomorrow’s customer-driven business will be done on the basis that the customer is more able to dictate more of the shots, whether through much better information, more combined resources or simply a wider range of cheaper alternatives. Business will be more of a plus-sum game where coopetition between companies and customers provides benefits for all. In these circumstances, trust as an alternative to company-control will be supplemented by a big dollop of customer-control as an alternative to trust.
The lack of trust today is a sign of an unbalanced business model; business is still weighted unfairly by companies in favour of, suprise, suprise, the same companies. With the increase in customer power that the various forms of customer co-creation enable, trust, although always important between business partners, may no longer be such a big issue for customers.
Graham Hill
Graham…great points, although I’m not sure that I entirely agree with the last bit: “trust, although always important between business partners, may no longer be such a big issue for customers.” It really depends on the customer and situation. I also feel that in nearly any situation, trust can reign supreme. For instance, in an intentional long-term relationship, trust may be the root of why a customer continues to choose a particular vendor, time and time again. Conversely, in a novel transaction with a new vendor (e.g. via eBay), the trust in the reputation system itself, as well as the venue, become critical to the interaction.