Extreme Trust: Honesty as a Competitive Advantage

by Don Peppers, Martha Rogers

If you accidentally try to order the same song twice from iTunes, you’ll be warned that you already own it. Not because it would be illegal or unethical for Apple to profit from your forgetfulness. There’s a clear busi­ness reason: the leaders of iTunes realize there’s no better way to make you trust them than to be totally honest when you least expect it. In the age of the Web, smartphones, and social networks, every action an organization takes can be exposed and critiqued in real time. Nothing is local or secret anymore. If you treat one customer unfairly, produce one shoddy product, or try to gouge one price, the whole world may find out in hours, if not minutes. The users of Twitter, Yelp, Epinions, and similar outlets show little mercy for bad behavior. The bar for trust­worthiness is higher than ever and continuing to rise. Don Peppers and Martha Rogers argue that the only sane response to these rising levels of transpar­ency is to protect the interests of customers proac­tively, before they have a chance to spread negative buzz—even if that requires spending extra money in the short run to preserve your reputation and cus­tomer relationships in the long run. The payoff of gen­erating extreme trust will be worth it. The authors show how this trend is playing out in many different sectors. Among their insights:
Banks will soon have to stop relying on overdraft charges, because depositers will expect advance warnings of low balances. Retailers will be expected to remind shoppers when they have unused balances on their gift cards. Credit card companies will have to coach customers on avoiding excessive borrowing. Cell phone providers will win more business by helping customers find the cheapest calling plans for their usage patterns. Health insurers will make recommendations based on improving long-term health, not increasing their revenue.  The companies that Peppers and Rogers call “trustable” remember what they learn from each inter­action, and they use these insights to create better and better customer experiences. They focus on win­ning the long-term battle for trust and loyalty, even if the dollar value of that trust is hard to quantify. For instance, in 2009 Best Buy launched Twelp­force, a service that responds to customer questions and problems via Twitter. It’s manned part time by more than two thousand employees. In its first year of operation Twelpforce responded to nearly thirty thousand inquiries—which not only improved cus­tomer service but also helped educate and motivate the associates who participated. The short-term profit might be small but the impact on trust is enormous. With a wealth of fascinating research as well as practical applications, this book will show you how to earn—and keep—the extreme trust of everyone your company interacts with.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Leadership, Self Help, Audiobook, Communication

336 pages, Hardcover

First published March 29, 2012

About the author

Recognized for well over a decade as one of the leading authorities on customer-focused relationship management strategies, Don Peppers is an acclaimed author and a founding partner of Peppers & Rogers Group, the world’s premier customer-centered consultancy.

Don’s vision, perspective and thoughtful analysis of global business practices has earned him some significant citations by internationally recognized entities. Business 2.0 Magazine named him one of the 19 “foremost business gurus of our times,” and Accenture’s Institute for Strategic Change listed him as one of the 50 “most important living business thinkers” in the world. The Times of London has listed him among its “Top 50 Business Brains,” and the U.K.’s Chartered Institute for Marketing included him in its inaugural listing of the 50 “most influential thinkers in marketing and business today.”

With co-author Martha Rogers, Ph.D., Don has produced a legacy of international bestsellers that have collectively sold more than a million copies in 18 languages. Together, their body of work includes books such as The One to One Future (1993), which BusinessWeek called “one of the bibles of new marketing”; Enterprise One to One (1997), which received a five-star rating from The Wall Street Journal; as well as The One to One Fieldbook (1999), The One to One Manager (1999); and One to One B2B, which made The New York Times business best-seller list within a month of publication in 2001. The authors have also published the first-ever CRM textbook for university use in graduate-level courses, Managing Customer Relationships (April 2004).

With Extreme Trust, they look to the future once again, predicting that rising levels of transparency will require companies to protect the interests of their customers and employees proactively, even when it sometimes costs money in the short term.

Reviews

[Jay French · Rating 3 out of 5]

This felt similar to a few business books I've read recently, and I think it was books about businesses being "friendlier" to their customers. While friendliness isn't the same as trustworthiness, it is close to their concept of proactive trustworthiness, or trustability. Friends are more trustable. At least the examples are very similar. Much of what is discussed comes back to how a company deals with issues - is it to do what it takes to make the quarter's numbers or do what it takes to make a happy customer. Nothing really earthshakingly new here, but a nice perspective. I like the initial comparison of the way most companies are built, being entirely self centered, and being psychopathic. I'm not sure I bought the long example of how trustworthy Google is. The authors describe Google's search tool as being sacrosanct - you can't buy better placement on their search results. But it comes across as the company as a whole is trustworthy, and I don't think the company can be held to that high standard shown in that one example. The trade off of free services in exchange for information can't be understood by all their users. This is the kind of thing that is the meat of their bad examples, such as cell phone companies that could change users to a less costly plan but don't. Companies have good and bad aspects - you aren't going to find one that is always one way or the other. On audio, I found the narrator to be lively, a plus in a business book, but to have some odd pronunciations.

Fact checker alert - on page 91 (thanks Amazon Look Inside!) they say that Red Hat is owned by IBM. Nope, never happened (IBM is one of many companies that have invested in Red Hat, but as minority holders, not as owners in the sense it's being written about). It's a very big and unexplainable mistake that's actually used to make a point. That's a bit scary coming from authors that are, in effect, a consulting company. Strangely, the book covers how companies can deal with their mistakes -- by owning them. So I checked the book's web site, which is very professional, with blog entries and discussion boards. These are mentioned in the book as ways to be more trustworthy - to be open and social. No mention of the error.

[Shubham Bansal · Rating 2 out of 5]

The idea of trust present in the book is good. But it lacks in content. The theory presented in the article could easily have been written as a blog entry or an article. Throughout the book, the same idea is repeated again and again. And hence you don't get any new insights after completion of 25% of the book.

[Heather Hamilton · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a marketing director in retail, we have come to learn that honesty and integrity are THE only priorities when it comes to interacting with our consumers. This book reinforced our mission and helped to refocus our efforts where it would have the most reach and impact.
A great read for any business that already has a great rapport with consumers or anyone who needs to make this their main focus.
Well done!

[Kacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading this book I realized - the more things change the more they stay the same - all customers really want is to feel like the companies they do business with have their best interests in mind. Now the question is, which companies will rise to the challenge and become "trustable"? The second question is not "if" companies do it, but how quickly can they do it?"

[gatorlog · Rating 5 out of 5]

"online technologies allow us to avenge wrongdoing in a highly social, largely interconnected way" p.100.

[Jenina Jill Sy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a great book on the reality of today's technology playing a critical role in business & building on people's inherent social nature.

[Іван Лешко · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like it

[Carlos Alberto Lopez Rodriguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Educative reading

Varies of life examples alaborate the book reading make it entertaining task, the references and the way the book walk thru the process

[Mark Bunch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth the time and effort to read. Today's business needs to heed this book message.

[Kathryn Salek · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was concise, focused on the topic and provided insight into the future of marketing that is being shaped by new levels of transparency available via social technology. I loved the case study examples. Not all were new to me, but all were presented in a new perspective that I found useful. My favorite was the Domino's example. They took a very brave and calculated step in owning the diminished quality of their pizza during their relaunch ad campaign, which paid off for them. I also greatly enjoyed the stories about Staples, Motrin, United and GM.

Thanks for another great book!