In your business we trust

Trust is a powerful element. It can determine if someone buys or not from you. On the web this simple word has a greater importance. Why ? In real life you can enter a supermarket without having to trust into the seller in order to buy. But when it comes to an on-line business trust seems to have a great importance.

I think it’s because of the non-human contact. We don’t see a familiar face and we don’t know who it is behind the web-page. But we need a good reason to buy. If you hear about two new e-commerce websites, one from Amazon and the other from a company you never heard of. From who you will buy ? Even if the price is higher at Amazon you’ll buy from them because you want to be sure you receive the product. So a website owner has to put a great amount of work into building a good reputation : basically build trust. Because when people trust what you say, they are more likely to buy from you.

The danger that is right behind the corner is today’s social web exposure. It’s more than enough to have one unsatisfied client and all the world will know. If one decides to record a small video and post it on YouTube or write an article and tweet about it be sure that the trust people have in you will start to diminish.  The human nature loves to find about these things and this kind of news has a big chance to go viral.

In these economically challenged times I think companies have to be extremely careful. Hard times may determine businesses to try and cut costs but they have to be careful where they cut. One unhappy client that decides to tell about your business to all his social-web-friends can lead to severe decrees in business.

There is an old saying that what comes up must come down. The cyclic pattern of trust has a much longer path on the way up. This means that when you lose the trust of your clients you do it quickly. But when you try to restore it you’ll find that you have to face a difficult, longer road.

The question that I would like get some answers from you is this. Which is harder : trying to build trust with a new client or trying to regain the trust you lost from a client that already knows that you have strong points but you messed up on something ?