Business success hinges on more than the quality of your product or services. It’s equally important to establish trust in your brand and maintain it to foster long-term relationships with your customers.
Tell you something you don’t know, right?
Trust is a frequently referenced, but misunderstood term. While the concept of customer trust is commonsensical, breaking it down into a tangible value your business can measure and drive is the real challenge.
In this article, we’ll explore:
- The definition of customer trust
- What makes up customer trust
- How customer trust has evolved
- Why customer trust can seriously impact your business
- How to build customer trust
For technology and security-focused companies, this information is paramount. Trust is the epicenter of customer loyalty in an environment of increasingly sophisticated cybersecurity threats — protecting your company and protecting customer trust are synonymous.
Let’s jump in.
What is customer trust: defined
Customer trust is the confidence a consumer has in a product or service’s ability to fulfill its ultimate promise. This definition may be adjusted, depending on the industry or vertical of the organization.
At SafeBase, for example, we view trust through the long-term lens of security and integrity — customer trust is a buyer’s lasting feeling of confidence in a seller’s security capabilities. Building customer trust via cybersecurity initiatives (trust management) is a growing organizational trend, spearheaded by consumer demand for increased security efficacy and data privacy.
Trust management is how your organization’s systems and operational practices impact customer trust. Understanding customer trust means first understanding the customer i.e. the values your customers actually care about, relative to your cybersecurity posture.
Here are the five common pillars that outline customer trust philosophy:
Transparency
Trust programs and philosophies are well-articulated and easily accessible to the right parties. Organizations seek methods to reduce the friction in communicating trust management by increasing the accessibility and discoverability (transparency) of documentation.
Proactivity
Organizations take the initiative to push communication and share relevant security information with buyers. Security communication is leveraged to support security-adjacent functions like sales and product teams. The organization also fulfills relevant promises in a timely, reliable manner.
Connectivity
Organizations update and communicate new information seamlessly, enabling buyers with capabilities suited to their unique needs, values, and preferences.
Control
Organizations have real-time oversight into how information is accessed and used, posturing security as a priority. Customers, clients, and partners have control over personal information and interactions with the organization — preferences and permissions are integrated where possible.
Insight
All customer trust principles are informed and improved through training and resource investment. Feedback is pivotal and welcomed, strengthening the organization’s security posture and value delivered to buyers and partners.
The evolution of customer trust in cybersecurity
Customer trust is the epicenter of the current business age. Information is abundant and feedback is immediate, giving customers unprecedented leverage in shaping business reputation. The integrity of your organization is one of the foundational measures of customer trust — let’s look at the present threats and opportunities in this evolution of customer trust.
Immediate threat: the cost of breaches
Operating online exposes businesses to the harsh reality of cyberattacks. The rise of these attacks and threats has painted headlines in the past decade, bringing a singular focus on trust as a deciding factor in who consumers choose.
A single data breach or software disruption can have devastating consequences on both current and future earnings. In fact, according to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach report, the average data breach cost exceeded $4.45 million in 2023.
The impact of data breaches extends beyond financial losses. They erode customer trust and loyalty, making people increasingly wary of entrusting sensitive data to your software. If not addressed properly, this sentiment can drive customers to your competitors.
Growing challenge: complexity and sophistication in cybersecurity
Your organization is facing a threat landscape that's constantly shifting and growing, increasing in intricacy and (at times) confusion. With each more sophisticated threat comes an equally dynamic regulatory and compliance landscape.
The solutions needed for both enabling and keeping up with this shift are growing. Each new vendor in your tech stack adds another layer of complexity — new audits and assessments, new integrations, and new touchpoints. What does all this tech-ification in response to evolving threats mean for your business?
It’s simple: customer trust is a double-edged sword. Building it is crucial for your business, but accomplishing customer trust becomes more daunting and difficult by the day. Organizations without a customer trust strategy are already playing catch up.
Opportunity: Trust as consumer leverage
The increase in information access has bridged the moat of obscurity between organizations and consumers. You’ve heard “in today’s digital world” all too often, but the reality of online-operated businesses is simple — more real-time information, more access, more transparency.
Each of these realities serves as a point of leverage for the consumer. The internet is responsible for the biggest flattening of the monopolistic curve in products and services in modern times — a consumer with more knowledge and more options is a consumer with more leverage.
Customer trust hinges on not just the acceptance, but the integration of these beliefs. Companies that continue choosing to operate behind a veil or intentionally inhibit the capabilities of the consumer will lack customer trust. But companies that choose to operate in what our digitally-focused ecosystem values — transparency, accountability, and being customer-first — will reap the rewards of customer trust.
So what are those rewards?
The impact of customer trust on your business
Customer trust is a multifaceted concept beyond just a transactional relationship between a business and its customers — it touches every facet of your business, from PR and marketing, to sales and revenue. When you build and earn customer trust, the rewards are immense.
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of customer trust benefits for your business:
Increased Customer Loyalty
Loyalty matters. Customers who believe in your brand will be more likely to use it repeatedly. Adobe, in partnership with Forrester Research, found that companies that prioritize the customer experience see, "1.6x higher brand awareness, 1.9x higher average order value, 1.7x higher customer retention, 1.9x return on spend, and 1.6x higher customer satisfaction rates."
Positive Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Strong customer relationships lead to positive reviews and valuable word-of-mouth marketing. According to a 2021 Nielsen Survey, 88% of consumers stated they make decisions as a result of word-of-mouth recommendations — word-of-mouth can be just as, if not more, powerful than a paid campaign. Using customer trust to build a base of eager customers creates a snowball effect on customer acquisition.
Improved Reputation Management
When customers trust a business, it will naturally gain position as a reputable and reliable partner in the industry. Businesses with a solid foundation of trust also become more resilient to potential reputational damage.
Customers are more likely to forgive the occasional mistake or defend your brand against critics. By prioritizing customer trust and satisfaction, you strengthen your competitive advantage and enhance your growth potential.
Higher Sales and Revenue
Converting prospective customers to buyers is how you capture a larger market share. When customers trust your solutions, they feel confident investing in your offerings, leading to higher conversion rates, greater deal velocity, and larger deals. Trust is a valuable currency with both established and new customers.
How to build customer trust
In practice, customer trust is the culmination of efforts that go above and beyond the development of a formal trust posture. As a cybersecurity focused organization, we frame customer trust through the lens of both trust postures and trust management solutions.
Building customer trust involves increasing transparency, shifting from reactive to proactive communication, integrating trust management into go-to-market processes, and developing mechanisms to improve both security postures and trust management.
Organizations already investing in customer trust are, in various forms and fashions, developing processes and skills in five crucial tenets:
- Fulfill on promises: meeting consumer (buyer) expectations
- Be transparent: no gatekeeping or inhibiting accessibility
- Prioritize connection: reducing friction to collaborate
- Segment control: clearly define information control parameters
- Empower alignment: security and other departments have unified goals
For security-minded organizations, these five tenets manifest in the security team's mindsets, in the technology and platforms they invest in, and in the way they position themselves in the organization.
At its core, “customer trust” is an investment – led by the security team – in building solid and long-term relationships with customers that lead to heightened buyer confidence. These investments give your organization a leg up both in the present and future, as the trend toward heightened buyer vigilance and cybersecurity sophistication increases.
If you want to learn more about building customer trust in your organization, check out our article below.
SafeBase is the leading Trust Center Platform designed for friction-free security reviews. With an enterprise-grade Trust Center, SafeBase automates the security review process and transforms how companies communicate their security and trust posture.
If you want to see how fast-growing companies like LinkedIn, Asana, and Jamf take back the time their teams spend on security questionnaires, create better buying experiences, and position security as the revenue-driver it is, schedule a demo.
