The Currency of Trust

I recently read a pretty direct and elaborate customer experience from someone based off of their terrible experience with a product and service combo that they purchased. The real takeaway that I took from their story was not their experience with the product. It was with the way they were served by the business owner and the lack of integrity and trust that the customer felt after the relationship terminated and the buyer shared their lack of alignment with the product and service.

Mark Twain has been quoted saying “Always tell the truth. It makes remembering the past much easier.”

In the service world that we live in, trust, integrity, and commitment are very much a finite resource in a relationship.

Think about it. As an advisor, almost everything that we share with client in deliverable form has the words “Past performance is no guarantee of future results” or some other variation of the future is not certain. If the “product” that we’re providing to clients has this as part of its anatomy, then the way we look at our client relationships must have an even higher emphasis on honoring our commitment to those that have chosen to work with us, working with them through a level of integrity

Honoring your commitment to your clients and those that have invested (no pun intended) in you as their advisor is the greatest way to ensure that the finite resource of trust and integrity is never compromised.

In addition, it allows you to create raving fans out of your clients and begin the process of building a tribe-like following…something that I believe we all aspire to create in our practices.

Jeopardize your trust and integrity and not only will you lose that relationship, but you run the business (and compliance) risk of having a disengaged relationship that will be short lived and most likely ultimately end in a parting of ways. To make matters worse, people are just as likely (if not sometimes more likely) to share a bad experience than a good one…and usually to the exact audience that we would like to be courting.

Even if you feel in your heart of hearts that you didn’t do anything wrong, perception is reality for your end user and “a person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still.”

After all…it doesn’t matter what you think and know…it’s how they feel.