Erosion of Trust

TOPICs: CUSTOMER SERVICE | COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Trust is the holy grail of doing business. You can’t buy trust and you can’t acquire trust through marketing. Trust is built through experience by companies who do what they say and back their products and services whenever there is an issue. Trust is what causes customers to become loyal and return to a brand over and over again. But trust is fragile, and it can be broken at any time. This blog installment is about damaged trust.

Nobody pays for his own roof in Texas - except me! During its 25-year life my roof weathered countless storms, including too many hailstorms to count. For the past ten years I celebrated every hailstorm, knowing that my insurance company would soon replace the roof and my cost would be minimal. After the most severe storms I always had my roof inspected but it never qualified for replacement. Finally, to avoid interior damage when the inevitable leaks began, I decided to pull the trigger on a new roof.

There are a million companies replacing Texas roofs and the industry has a reputation for shady business practices. Having less interest in price than in quality, my only call was to an acquaintance who is a salesman in the roofing business. I know him and the owner socially and recently used the company for a large project at our business. I have referred him to friends and always received rave reviews when their jobs were successfully completed.

I accepted his proposal without negotiation and understood that my skylights would be field inspected and replaced if necessary at an additional charge. The communication leading up to installation day was excellent and the crew began arriving at 6:15 that morning as promised. The two day job was completed in a single 14 hour day and cleanup was outstanding.

Two weeks later we returned from a brief trip and noticed a musty smell in the house. Upon investigation I discovered a leak near one of our skylights. Our salesman was his usual responsive self and had a crew at our house within hours. That’s where the problems began. He reported that old skylights are typically brittle and that one had hairline cracks which caused the leak but that the cracks had now been sealed. I don’t know about you, but I found that answer to be unsatisfactory. I had an expensive new roof with an old, patched skylight.

Trust is based on perception, which is based on experience. Up to this point my experiences had all been positive and my trust in the company was high. But the salesman’s weak explanation damaged that trust. Had I realized that the old skylights would actually be removed and reinstalled I would have insisted on new skylights. (Aren’t the chances of 25 year old weathered plastic surviving the removal/reinstallation process pretty slim?) It was his job to make the correct recommendation on the front end of the project, not to defend a poor field decision. Although I am confident that my leak problem will ultimately be resolved, my perception of the company has been altered. If I recommend them to friends I will do so less enthusiastically than before.

This experience made me wonder what we might be overlooking in our daily business practices. Are we relying on our perception or on the perception of our customers? The answer to that question is critical because the customer’s perception is all that really matters. We work so hard to build trust only to lose it because of a careless comment, a scraped wall, a soiled carpet or an incorrect invoice. In the case of the roofing company, I’m afraid the salesman doesn’t understand the damage he did. My trust is not gone, but it definitely has been eroded - and that is sad.