The Four Factors of Trust

CHAPTER 5The Least TrustedOrganizations

In this chapter:

• The trust gap: business leaders versus customers
• The least trusted
  • Distrusted
  • Ambivalent Neutrals

As we saw with brands like Cleveland Clinic, Energizer, and Marriott, patterns in the data told us interesting things about what the most trusted brands have in common. We were equally curious (and a little afraid) to learn what the least trusted organizations shared.

The Trust Gap: Business Leaders versus Customers

We know that people can be overconfident when it comes to gauging how much others trust them (something we are not exempt from). The same is true of organizations. In 2021, we worked with Twilio, a cloud communications platform, to launch a study of trust with customers. We surveyed 1,000 consumers and 500 leaders of organizations in the consumer industry.⁵¹ We wanted to know how much customers trusted certain brands, and how much leaders of those brands believed their customers trusted them. Here is what we learned: in overall trust scores, 79 percent of business leaders believe customers have somewhat or very high trust in their organization's brand. Yet just 52 percent of people feel somewhat or very high trust for the brands they purchased or used in 2021. That's a gap of 27 percentage points!⁵²

79% of business leaders believe customers trust their brand, yet just...

52% of people say they trust the brands they purchased in 2021.

Even the most trusted brands have room for improvement. For ...