Trust, truly is the foundation of all human connections.
While TRUST is vital to the success of any business, it is DISTRUST that can cause a disaster. The key message from the Roy Morgan Net Trust Score (NTS) survey is that distrust leads to customer churn, loss of market share and a plummeting share price.
It is now over a year since we at Roy Morgan began our major program of research into Trust and Distrust. The program has been exploratory, both qualitative and quantitative, and iterative - as we discovered over 15 waves of research how Australians feel about brands.
We have now interviewed more than ten thousand Australians, asking them about brands and companies they trust and distrust, and more importantly why - why they trust the brands and companies they trust and why they distrust the companies and brands they distrust. The results are clear. While there are people and professions trusted for their honesty and ethics, institutional Australia is operating in a miasma of distrust. And the underlying issues have become clearer with every wave of research.
Like all good research this has raised more questions.
As CEO of Roy Morgan, as well as Principal Researcher for this program I have found myself focussed afresh on just how critical Trust is for Roy Morgan, the company whose history is long and deeply entwined with the history of Australia and Australians, and whose future is now entrusted to me.
Today, we interview fifty thousand people all over Australia in their own homes each year. Talking to them faceto-face they share their views on every aspect of their lives, their hopes and fears, and detailed personal information. These people trust us to share their stories.
People trust us to protect their privacy, and to use the information they have entrusted to us wisely and for the right purposes. Since Roy Morgan began we have interviewed in-depth well over a million Australians. That’s a lot of trust from a lot of people. And, for us, that’s a lot of responsibility.
Today, when Roy Morgan reports on how Australians are feeling about the Government, the state of superannuation, health, education, social media or a particular company or brand, we have a huge responsibility to accurately portray the situation. Australians trust that we will always tell the truth.
Understanding what drives trust or distrust in customers – and just as importantly, potential customers – is essential to brands wishing to manage their distrust.
This is not just a ‘marketing’ or ‘comms’ issue – it goes to the heart of corporate culture and governance for every company. Distrust should be on the Risk register of every publicly listed company in Australia.
We have seen time and again companies making bad business decisions that don’t take into account the way people will feel about an action or policy. Whether it’s AMP, the big banks or our energy companies, directors and their management teams need to think about the operational drivers of trust and distrust – ethics, believability, integrity and transparency.
Trust truly is the foundation of all human connections - and in a world distracted by technology, strategic inflections, tipping points, disruption, automation and artificial intelligence, it is easy to forget that trust is what makes a society civilised. Without truth and without trust there is no civil society.
If you would like to understand how trust and particularly distrust is playing out in industry visit www.roymorgan.com follow the link to the report and type QANTASTRUST in the discount code, click update and proceed to download your report or call 1800 633 813.
‘Without truth and without trust there is no civil society’