How Can You Instill Customer Trust If Your Own Employees Don't Trust

Customer Trust is something that emerges over time when everything in-house is running as expected.

It’s extremely important your staff, partners and vendors have confidence in your leadership and vision. Without this confidence there is decent in the ranks, lack of effort to “go the extra mile” let alone to complete expectations with grace, and a general lack of respect of the leadership let alone the product or services being provided. And, all of this sense of uneasiness translates to the customer. Once the customer starts questioning your business the impact can be severe.

Take the recent walkout of several major executives at Twitter. Do you think there was an uneasy feel that circulated through the ranks below? How do you think that translated to sales? What about those investors who are watching the events unfold? Then, finally, when the news broke (ultimately from internal sources), how did the public react? As a company you need to be able to act quickly to dispel rumors and concerns. Transparency (to a certain level) is something that can alleviate concerns. It took Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, to make a public announcement to lessen public concerns about this company and their continued struggle to rebound from falling stock prices. But, this is just part of the challenge. He’ll also have his hands full calming concerns of those employees, vendors, stockholders and investors to keep things moving. It’s a balancing act for sure. But it’s clear that customer trust is often triggered by internal strife.

Recent data collected and published by statistics analysis giant Statista found that a large portion of employees across the globe don’t feel they can trust their employer to do the right thing.
You will find more statistics at Statista

If you’re an employer in the United States looking at this right now, you must be asking yourself, “if my employees can’t trust me to do the right thing, then how does this translated to customer trust for our business?” And, if you’re not asking that question, then maybe you should. According to these statistics employees in Mexico and India far exceed expectations of employee confidence than do those here in the U.S.

Frequent or consistent employee polling can help you gauge the temperature of your staff and help to put out any fires before they take over.

Much has been send regarding the need to monitor your brand online (See our R2 Reputation Management Service Plans if you need help setting this up), and typically when we think about online reviews and rankings we assume this information is driven by consumers we’re servicing in some form or fashion. And, as such, is really focused on the customer trust of our brand. But, it is not unreasonable to think that current or past employees won’t, at some point, take to the internet to voice their concerns or grievances. Or, maybe they’ve spoken to someone else who then voices a concern to someone else… so on and so forth, until someone, somewhere, is writing about it as a third-party observer or affect.

What do you do to monitor employee satisfaction?

Do you have policy in place to help you monitor and gauge employee satisfaction in the workplace? Establishing routine polls of staff either quarterly or annually can help establish expectations and an open, safe line of communication between both management and general staff within the company.

Do you have policy in place to give employees a safe way to express concerns outside of polling activities? Giving employees an outlet to express concerns, opinions, or ideas that can improve the workplace environment as well as the product or services you work together to supply to your consumer base can not only inspire great new ideas the company can implement, but it also deters actions of expressing these concerns through outside outlets beyond your company’s “virtual borders”.

What are your thoughts or opinions on the matter?

We would love to hear from you.

Did you like what you read? Then share the love!

About
Latest Posts

Follow me

Tanya T

founder, owner at Back2Basics

A mother and business woman with a strong entrepreneurial drive, and a need to want to see others succeed. Tanya is a wife and mother to three, an active volunteer in her community and avid lover of food, friends, travel and pushing the envelope professionally.

Follow me