Loyalty, Profit and Trust

We do business with people and organizations we trust.  Trust is the most important characteristic and the most valuable asset a business can have.  Keep my trust and you’ll keep my business.

Customers decide to trust or not based on what they hear and see dealerships do.  They then evaluate whether the practices they observe are in keeping with their sense of what is trustworthy.  To be trustworthy, dealerships must demonstrate trustworthy practices.  While we each have our own set of cues we’re looking for, there are four practices that are universal and make up the pillars upon which trust is built.

Congruence: Although a word we don’t hear often, it best describes practices that are always in agreement with stated intentions and values.  We say organizations are congruent when they “say what they’ll do and do what they say;” when they “walk their talk.”

To be a trusted organization, the agreement between stated intentions and values and observable practices must be congruent throughout the dealership.  My wife drives a Toyota.  She trusts her Service Advisor and the dealership because they have proven themselves to be congruous.  However, given recent events, she has some serious doubts about Toyota as a trustworthy organization.  Interestingly enough, whether she, and thousands of others, remains loyal to the Toyota brand depends more on how Service Advisors behave and dealerships respond to customer needs than on how Toyota is positioned in the media.

Is your organization congruent?  Are it’s intentions and values in full agreement with everyone from the Dealer Principal all the way through to the Porters?  Are employees seen as being congruent by your customers?  Are their processes and behaviors in full agreement with the dealership’s stated intentions and values?  Do they say what they’ll do and do what they say?  Do they walk the organization’s talk?

Openness: We’ve heard a lot lately about this term and it’s easy to understand how a lack of openness leads to distrust.  Hardly a day goes by when we don’t hear someone saying we need more openness, transparency, and full disclosure, from our governments, our politicians, the healthcare and insurance industries, and especially from Wall Street.

Dealerships demonstrate openness by a willingness to disclose relevant information and provide whatever it takes to remove doubt.  Service Advisors do this when explaining the difference between the factory recommended and the dealership’s recommended maintenance schedules.  They also do this when explaining the need for additional services during work-in-process.  Advisors demonstrate a willingness to be open during an active service delivery; not when passing delivery off to a Cashier.  Openness is especially called for when a customer expresses dissatisfaction.  Not being open leads to doubt and where there’s doubt, there’s mistrust.

Acceptance: This may be the least recognized of the four pillars.  Yet, acceptance facilitates and makes possible the other three.  Our culture is, always has been, and always will be one of diversity.  Acceptance of the differences diversity holds is essential.  Our collective trust depends on it.  When we know and feel we’re respected and accepted for who we are, we’re more open, more likely to be congruent and act in agreement with our values, and more likely to be reliable as keepers of our commitments.

We don’t trust organizations that don’t accept us for who we are.  If a dealership treats me differently because of the color of my skin or my gender or my dress or my mannerisms, I won’t trust anyone there to give me a fair deal.  I won’t give it my business.

Reliability: Trust requires reliability, which is not the same thing as trust.  We tend to say organizations, people, and brands are trusted; while products, services and processes are reliable.  But, it’s not that simple.  The two are co-dependent.  Reliability fosters certainty and certainty reduces doubt.  When there’s less doubt, there’s more trust…in the brand, in the organization, and in its people.

Customers need to know they can rely on a dealership to meet its commitments to their needs.  Customers should have no need for favoritism.  They should be able to trust one Salesperson as much as the next, one Service Advisor as much as another.  As authorized representatives of vehicle manufacturers, customers rely on dealerships to provide the best advice, parts, maintenance, and repair services available anywhere.  These are their expectations.  Fail to meet them and the organization is seen as unreliable; one that can’t be trusted to consistently meet their needs.

We all want to trust.  We need to trust to feel safe.  Trust is more complex than I’ve presented here and the subtleties by which we judge trustworthiness are infinite.  We do know this, however.  It takes a lot for an organization to earn someone’s trust.  It takes vigilance to maintain it.  It can be lost in an instant.

Are the four pillars of trust in place at your dealership?  How strong are they?