The Importance of Trust in Business

Economy of Trust

The economy of trust. An insightful look at the sharing economy (Uber, Airbnb and TaskRabbit, among others) and why trust has become a force in today's market. ... Rachel Botsman explores the currency that makes systems like Airbnb and Taskrabbit work: trust, influence, and what she calls "reputation capital."

Great Ted Talk here

As we get into cars with complete strangers, sleep in the beds of people we’ve never met and lend money to others on the other side of the world, a powerful new currency is emerging — and it’s based on trust.

What’s striking about the shared economy is not the technology that has made it possible, but the vast changes it has triggered in society. It has brought a renewed sense of community, engendered more collaboration, sparked new thinking and put a premium on trust, tapping into a need that transcends boundaries and is still rife with opportunity.

If you’re not working to build and demonstrate it, then the future might be about to leave you behind, as trust is quickly becoming the global — and most-valued — currency of modern time.

Will there be a single metric of trust?

Trust may soon be a commodity that consumers not only want from the brands with which they interact, but demand to know about other people. It won’t just be about customers reviewing brands, but our own personas being attached to a score or reputation; people themselves will be “measured.”

Everything from our influence, social following, work connections, credit worthiness and beyond, could make up the metric of trust. This may end up deciding who gets upgraded on a flight, who can buy products from us or who gets priority customer service.

In this new world, our “trust score” will be the only metric that people need in order to make decisions on how to do business, and with whom. It effectively becomes the new credit score. For someone with V.C. funding, the opportunity in the next year to find a single metric of trust is huge.

The question is what are you doing to actively build trust with your customers? In a world where your brand is less what you say and more the collective experiences of everyone using it, you can’t simply rely on marketing to meet the challenge for you in the future.

Interesting article here

Trust operates in all sorts of ways, from saving money that would have to be spent on security to improving the functioning of the political system. But above all, trust enables people to do business with each other. Doing business is what creates wealth.

Forbes article here

Notes for the Zoom Meeting “The importance of Trust in business”

Caroline Hayward