High Value Relationships - Trust Points

By Jim Cathcart

In day to day business dealings we have many "Touch Points" of contact with our customers. If you are like the Four Seasons Hotels and have 500 or so employees serving guests in around 270 rooms then you will experience nearly 5,000 direct contacts with your customers each day. The better you manage each of those touch points, the better and more profitable your customer relations will be.

Don't let the large numbers intimidate you. Out of the 5,000 touch points mentioned above there are many fewer critical contacts that we might isolate into the category of "Trust Points."
Trust Points are the customer interactions where the quality and outcome have greater implications than other points of contact. For example: the processing of someone's bill is a trust point, whereas the handling of their luggage is a touch point.

Here's another way to think of it. A typical golf ball has about 336 impressions on its surface. Each of these is near perfect if the ball is to be accepted for retail sale. (Otherwise it is rejected and used as a practice ball.) Of those 336 impressions only a few of them are in the strike zone where a golf club impacts the ball. Which impressions depends on how you place the ball on the tee.

Once the ball has been teed up there is a special section of the ball, known as "the sweet spot", where the club must hit the ball in order to send it where you want it to go. If you strike any other portion of the ball it will go astray.

The same dynamic is true with business. Of all the many touch points with your customers there are a few in each of your dealings with them that become "trust points". In these moments of contact trust is either built or reduced. Consider the service call touch point where a customer is telling you what his problem is. If he feels you are listening to him and genuinely seeking to understand his concerns, then trust increases. If he gets the impression that you aren't listening fully then trust erodes.

Last week I took my wife's car to the dealer for service. When the rep told me about an expensive repair that was needed I asked if there was a less expensive way to deal with it. He simply said, "It's an expensive car." Trust dropped in that moment. He didn't listen to and care about my concerns, he simply reasserted his price. Next time, I'll be going to another dealer for service. It doesn't take many experiences like this before you start to feel the financial loss from poorly handled touch points.

To address this issue and increase the High Value Relationships for your own business here is where to start:

1. Identify all of the touch points where your business makes contact with the customers.
   
2. Isolate the ones that are potential "trust points".
   
3. Develop a standard procedure for assuring that the trust points are always handled with care.
   
4. Hold yourself to high standards of quality on all touch points.
   
5. Teach your people that all relationships are assets and should be managed as such.
   
6. Measure, monitor and evaluate your customer contact experiences constantly.
   
7. Remember, things that are measured tend to improve. But only if you analyze and discuss what you have measured.
   

Check my other blog http://relationshipintelligenceblog.com for frequent articles on this topic.
If you need help, please give me a call or email.
Jim Cathcart 805 777 3477 or jim @ cathcart dot com.