Why displaying trust broadly is critical for modern business success

Transcript:

Trust is such an interesting topic, especially in business.  There are cliches all over the place. You know, people will do business with those that they know, like, and trust is one of the most familiar. I have been paying close attention to this topic of trust since Rachel Botsman, an amazing woman, by the way, I believe she's still a fellow at Oxford. 2016 she did a Ted talk which basically said we've stopped trusting institutions and started trusting strangers. If you've got the time, please. Don't listen to me. Go listen to Rachel Botsman. But the general idea that she introduces, or, should we say research that she introduces, over the past 200 years trust itself has evolved tremendously.

So 200 years ago, all trust was local, right? You knew your local vendor. You knew everybody in your neighborhood or town. There was that close-knit, personal relationship. Because our mobility was limited. Our communication channels were fairly limited. That was just the reality of life.

And then we moved into the birth of Wall Street and huge corporations and saw the introduction of institutional trust. So because a company can afford that incredible, you know, maybe a Superbowl ad or because they have a palatial headquarters, this demonstration almost the demonstration of capitalism we gave them our trust. Today, however, we don't trust institutions. We don't trust the media. We certainly don't trust the government. People broadly trust their peers. Right. And you think about your own individual actions from how you decide what to put in your Amazon cart when you're preparing for Christmas. Every one of those products came with an aggregate opinion

from some thousands of completely anonymous strangers. But we trust that feedback. Or you think of collaborative consumption sites like an Uber. If you told me in the year 2000 that I was going to get into a car with a stranger, you know, in their Toyota Camry, unmarked car to head off to the airport or to dinner, I would have laughed at you.

But, Uber understands trust and understands the evolution of trust. And I can see not only who I'm riding with, but what other riders have thought of that service from that individual. And in reverse, that driver can see how I'm going to behave as a passenger based on previous ratings from other drivers.

So that's a really powerful construct that in today's market means successful brands have got to leverage the voice of their customer in order to help convince that next prospect, that they also ought to transact and that their money is going to be well-spent. And that they're going to receive the service that they expect.

So trust really underpins everything that we build at Widewail.  When we talk to local businesses or national brands, we talk a lot about the importance of building that trust and displaying trust broadly in order to help grow the business.