How to earn customer trust in your sector

Many executives may feel they’re insulated from the risk of losing customer trust based on upbeat surveys or positive feedback. But the multiyear persistence of the trust gap — between executives who believe they are highly trusted and customers who highly trust companies — suggests that corporate leaders don’t have internal structures in place to consistently identify where problems exist. Many companies say they measure trust but, based on our conversations with executives, those metrics are often subjective and don’t fully capture sentiment across stakeholder groups. That lack of knowledge leaves companies vulnerable to customer attrition. Forty percent of consumers tell us they stopped buying from a company because they didn’t trust it.

The trust gap for healthcare industries, industrial products and tech, media and telecommunications is little changed from last year — but it’s bigger this year for consumer markets (CM) and financial services (FS).

The widening trust gap is occurring because the number of CM and FS executives who say they’re highly trusted is rising faster than consumer faith in these sectors. For example, FS executives who say consumer trust is very high rose 10 percentage points from 2023, while consumers who say they highly trust FS companies rose only five percentage points.

In normal times, the trust gap likely poses few reputational or operational problems. When controversy occurs, however, consumer loyalty may not be the firewall that executives imagine it to be. Most consumers tell us they won’t come back if they’ve lost trust in a brand, even if the company corrects the mistake. Only about four in 10 consumers say they're willing to forgive a company that fixes a bad situation, a reading that has changed little from prior surveys.

Prudent leaders should consider exploring more deeply just how much trust consumers place in their company and what levers they can pull to earn trust — and then prioritize problem areas where there’s a stark mismatch between their views and those of customers. After all, shaping a more trustworthy organization starts inside the company.

The brittleness of trust takes on new urgency in the digital age where it’s much easier for customers to share their thoughts or shop elsewhere. The combined effect of apps, social media and the trust gap might make a crisis more difficult to control.

What do customers say will earn their trust? Their highest priority (67%) is hearing from companies about how they are protecting and disseminating personal data. That’s little changed from a year ago. What has changed is that fewer executives (32% versus 42% last year) say they disclose data privacy policies. That’s a missed opportunity.

Data protection is paramount for consumers, ranking ahead of other important trust-building disclosures such as financial performance, progress on diversity, equity and inclusion and environmental impact. Being more transparent about corporate data policies may be one of the easiest ways to earn consumer trust.

Being more transparent may also become table stakes in the new world of personalization that’s being turbocharged by the growing tide of companies that are sharing data with other firms. Consumers remain wary of how their information is being used and whether it can be accessed by hackers. Being open about how data is stored, used and sold may help a company preempt misinformation about their privacy policies and procedures during a crisis.

Employees also say that data protection is key to earning their trust. They tell us it’s very important alongside appropriate pay, fair treatment, ethical behavior and executive listening. And where there’s a strong feeling of trust, more than half of employees (52%) say they put more effort into their work, which can have an immediate impact on everyday operations. Employee trust can also help in attracting talent, with 60% saying they recommended their employer to friends and family. If trust erodes, however, the risk is not that people leave — it’s that they stay and work half-heartedly.

The two industries with the largest executive-employee trust gap are consumer markets and industrial products. That may reflect the nature of the work, where employees experience a higher amount of oversight than in sectors where knowledge workers dominate. Still, the wide gulf between the trust executives say they have for employees and what workers in all industries experience highlights the need for better communication from leaders and more deliberate actions to emphasize that employees have agency to make decisions or advocate for change. Empowerment will be especially important as generative AI (GenAI) becomes more widely available to all employees. Leaders advocating for experimentation and adoption will likely have greater success if they give clear signals that they trust employees to step outside their comfort zones while adhering to the GenAI guardrails that are necessary to protect data.

Lifting employee trust with the goal of increasing a worker’s discretionary effort is a core component of PwC’s job quality KPI, the Good Job Score. The Good Job Score measures job quality across four dimensions: leadership, purpose, growth and fairness. Our research finds that companies providing higher job quality financially outperform their peers.

Here are some actions you can take to help embed trust-building into your organization.

• Acknowledge the trust gap. We think there’s a disconnect between what executives believe they’re measuring related to trust and what will actually provide insight. Many executives, for instance, focus on employee satisfaction and retention, thinking these equate to trust. While they are important, measuring trust in a holistic way requires more than that.
• Take on trust opportunities as a team. Treat trust as a collective responsibility, using a common set of metrics that formally measure trust. Earning trust is a shared responsibility, which means working harder as an executive team to put it at the center of your strategy.
• Focus on building a culture of trust. Start by fostering trust within the C-suite. Without that foundation, it will be difficult to build a culture of trust. Show employees that you trust them and provide opportunities to help them trust each other more. Offer additional employee training and mentoring programs, career advancement opportunities and forums for two-way feedback. Investment in career advancement can foster trust and enhance an employee’s motivation and job satisfaction — making your business more profitable.
• Develop a stakeholder engagement plan. Assign relationship owners to stakeholders and outline what your communication strategy with them will be. Put listening channels in place to better understand stakeholder perspectives and to detect shifts in views. Recognize that trust is fluid and stakeholder needs and wants will evolve. Your leadership team should engage with stakeholders regularly.
• Tell your company’s story consistently. It is crucial for businesses to align the narrative in their disclosure documents with what they publish on their company websites. Is your 10-K language around climate impact, for example, consistent with your sustainability report? Preventing conflicting messages is essential to avoiding confusion and mistrust.
• Embed trust in new areas from the start. Doing so can help deliver more long-term value while avoiding having to close gaps later. And as you approach disclosure regulations, put technology and transparency at the center of your reporting strategy. This can help your company develop the controls and processes needed to build trust around the collection, storage and reporting of data.