Building Brand Trust: 3 Hidden Barriers & How to Solve Them

Building brand trust is a high-stakes game with no room for mistakes. When trust falters, marketing budgets balloon and profits plummet. CEOs and CIOs nod in agreement that trust is essential, but few grasp what it truly demands.

Monitoring your brand is not about throwing more resources at call centers or ticking off boxes. Trust is fragile. It crumbles when cold policies replace empathy and when customer loyalty is taken for granted. As companies expand, complacency sneaks in, silently eroding the very foundation that keeps customers coming back.

What if you could pinpoint exactly where your brand is losing trust? The payoff is enormous. The cost of failure is devastating. Let’s uncover the hard truths every company must face to become a brand people don’t just buy from but believe in.

Building Brand Trust: What Is Brand Trust?

Brand trust refers to the confidence and emotional connection customers have in a brand’s ability to consistently deliver on its promises, uphold ethical standards, and provide positive customer experiences. It encompasses factors such as a brand’s reputation, customer satisfaction, and alignment with core values, and is often measured through tools like the Edelman Trust Barometer.

Seven out of ten customers said brand trust was what kept them back in 2019. It’s likely even higher today. The only way to attack the obstacles to consumer trust is to understand them in the first place.

Three ways to lose customers’ trust forever

Trust value has decreased over the last few years. There is widespread distrust across government, media, social media, and business. With rising skepticism, brands must deliver consistent, seamless, and timely service. We’ll review each of these gaps and offer ways to build trust over the long haul.

1. Irrelevant CRM campaigns
2. Omnichannel disintegration
3. Poor internal communication

1) Irrelevant CRM campaigns

CRM software systems store every interaction between your team and contacts, capturing valuable customer data. They track digital marketing campaigns, webinars, and social media presence. Despite all this data, most automated campaigns miss the mark: they aren’t optimized for real people.

The complexity grows when managing relationships among staff, customers, and partners. Many automated campaigns forget that recipients are real individuals with genuine concerns. They may not fit your ideal customer persona perfectly. When an irrelevant email lands in a customer’s inbox, it damages their experience. All the effort in crafting great content marketing is wasted if it doesn’t align with your audience’s needs.

Here are the riskiest areas of the customer journey you must check carefully:

• Prospect nurture campaigns
• Welcome/onboarding emails
• Customer support messaging
• Case studies and social proof
• SEO and other content marketing activities

Each of these areas works to set expectations for customers today. Placing too much stock in influencers can limit your brand-building efforts. Your customers right now determine your brand tomorrow through review sites and comments on social media. At the heart of any effective marketing campaign is the target audience. Your CRM acts as a Swiss Army Knife for nurturing your relationships with relevant content.

Practical solutions you can try to build brand trust:

• Clean up your data. Maintaining brand trust starts with proper data hygiene. Clean out old contacts, update preference data, and turn off outdated campaigns.
• Simplify your marketing automation. Marketing automation in today’s CRMs often becomes neglected when it’s complex to manage. Strip the sales pitch down to the essentials for a majority of your audience.
• Improve documentation. Improve the precision of your CRM by asking your customer-facing teams to document every interaction.

2) Omnichannel disintegration

According to a study by Acquia, 90% of people felt brands did not live up to customer expectations, and 65% of consumers switch brands because of unmet expectations. This isn’t a pricing or brand awareness issue. This is an experience problem.

Omnichannel encompasses all the methods customers use to communicate with your team. That includes the phone, web, email, social media, and mobile. Consistency of service is crucial to deliver a consistent customer experience across products and services. Consumers look for convenience and consistency, and trust reduces uncertainty when trying new products or services. You can’t have a great sales process and support experience with friction.

Trust also removes the anxiety of trial-and-error purchasing. The truth comes out through online reviews, often in scores of negative reviews instead of positive experiences.

Your brand’s trust suffers when different contact channels deliver inferior customer experiences. Measuring the success of your omnichannel program includes:

• Call center tools and training
• Social media platform capabilities
• Response times across different channels

Ways to improve customer experience across multiple contact channels:

• Conduct customer mystery shops. The best way to build brand trust is to audit your contact channels. Go through as if a customer or prospect would: call, text, tweet, and even email.
• Determine if you have a policy or technology challenge. You’ll uncover two types of issues. Decide if you are facing a policy or a technical challenge. Customers should not need to repeat themselves when switching channels.
• Adopt an omnichannel platform for your organization. A unified communications system is one of the best ways to treat every customer like a VIP. This will let you accept inbound customer tickets and route them easily and automatically.

3) Poor internal communication

Every company aims for transparent, consistent communication with its team. But reality often falls short. When problems arise, how quickly can your team respond? If they solve issues in real time and act on customer feedback, you’re in a strong position. Addressing problems and elevating product ideas builds trust in your brand.

This is employee empowerment in action.

Signs of conflict appear in employee surveys, customer escalations, and ratings on Yelp and Google. It’s not just one leader’s job to fix these issues. It’s the CEO’s responsibility, since many stem from toxic employee culture. Nothing ruins a customer experience more than unresolved problems. Worse, employees may hesitate to escalate issues to senior leaders. Sometimes policies block solutions. Other times, outdated technology and tools get in the way.

Also, pay attention to what employees say about your company on LinkedIn. Are they excited? Proud? Every employee influences other parts of the business, like recruiting. Thought leaders must share a long-term vision for the company and its people. Remember, word of mouth is earned slowly but lost quickly.

Three tips to strengthen team communication:

1. Set protocols for channels. Establish a standard of responsiveness across all internal channels. It could be as simple as ensuring all internal emails are actioned within one business day.
2. Stress clarity over brevity. Rather than only being short with internal messages, aim to be clear. Ask team members to consider how someone might receive their message when communicating with each other.
3. Encourage digital diplomacy. As remote work becomes the norm, employees might not be aware of their peers’ responsibilities. Additionally, consider setting up a program where your staff listens to customer calls to understand how they can improve the customer experience.

Related: How To Build an Incredible Brand Reputation From Scratch

Business communication tools bring you closer

Customers want to engage with brands using comfortable mediums across social media, email, live chat, phone, and text message. They seek timely service and knowledgeable staff. Your team needs a unified business communications system. This boosts internal communication and speeds up issue resolution. Modern tools like personalized sales emails and a business VoIP system can increase brand loyalty.

Don’t treat these as separate channels. Integrate messaging and voice platforms. This ensures critical data is available in real time. All these tools help build relationships. Building brand trust also means using social proof and user-generated content. It encourages customers to share real experiences.

Live chat offers many opportunities for exceptional customer contact 24/7. It allows deeper engagement than casual browsing. Plus, 83% of consumers trust recommendations from friends or family. As you attract customers beyond the United States, adapt your marketing strategies.

Bridging gaps between digital customer contact channels is easier than you think. When your staff is offline, use interactive chatbots. They can answer questions and capture contact info for follow-up.

7 Must-have Fixes to Strengthen Brand Trust

Building brand trust is an ongoing process that requires attention to multiple facets of your business. Here are seven essential fixes every company should implement to strengthen its brand trust and foster lasting customer relationships.

1. Enhance Customer Insights and Segmentation
   Understanding your target market deeply is crucial. Use customer insights gathered from surveys, social listening, and direct feedback to segment your audience effectively. Tailor your brand messaging and CRM campaigns to meet the specific needs and preferences of each segment. This personalized approach increases relevance and shows customers you value their unique experiences.
2. Implement Consistent Brand Messaging Aligned with Brand Values
   Ensure that all marketing communications consistently reflect your brand promises and core values. Consistency across channels builds consumer confidence and reinforces your brand equity. Customers feel more secure when the brand messaging matches their personal experiences and expectations.
3. Prioritize High-Quality Products and Services
   Delivering a quality product is foundational to building brand trust. Research shows that satisfied customers who receive high-quality products are more likely to become loyal customers and make repeat purchases. Quality products reduce customer anxiety and encourage positive word-of-mouth, which further enhances brand reputation.
4. Leverage Social Media Engagement and Social Listening
   Active social media engagement allows brands to interact directly with customers, address concerns, and celebrate positive reviews in real time. Utilize social listening tools to monitor social media mentions and sentiment analysis to gain valuable insights into public perception. This ongoing process helps brands respond promptly and adapt strategies based on real-time insights.
5. Foster Employee Advocacy and Internal Communication
   Employees are powerful brand ambassadors. Encourage employee advocacy by cultivating a positive workplace culture that aligns with your brand values. Transparent and clear internal communication ensures that employees are informed and empowered to deliver exceptional customer interactions, which directly impact consumer confidence.
6. Measure Brand Trust Using Net Promoter Score and Brand Trust Surveys
   Regularly measure brand trust using tools such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) and comprehensive brand trust surveys. These metrics provide direct feedback on how customers perceive your brand’s reliability and integrity. Tracking these over time helps identify areas for improvement and validates the effectiveness of your trust-building efforts.
7. Deliver on Brand Promises with Transparency and Integrity
   Trust is fragile and can be lost quickly if brand promises are not fulfilled. Avoid over-promising and under-delivering by setting realistic expectations and maintaining transparency about your operations, pricing, and data governance. Demonstrating integrity in all customer interactions strengthens loyalty and builds a competitive advantage.

By addressing these seven areas, companies can create a robust foundation for building and sustaining brand trust. This not only improves customer retention and satisfaction but also drives positive word-of-mouth and enhances the bottom-line benefits of a loyal customer base.

Brand Trust & Brand Loyalty Separate the Winners

Brand trust is becoming increasingly vital as consumers look beyond superficial marketing to companies’ true values. Acting as a bridge between customer satisfaction and brand loyalty, trust turns casual shoppers into committed buyers and drives retention. Millennials, now the largest decision-making group, prioritize experience and authenticity, often willing to pay more for trusted brands.

Building brand trust is an ongoing effort that leads to higher customer lifetime value and repeat business, especially in uncertain economic times. Authenticity and aligning actions with values help brands endure challenges and foster loyalty. Storydoing brands, which demonstrate their values through actions, outperform those that only tell stories about their finances.

Brands that effectively optimize CRM, communication channels, and internal processes are best positioned to build and maintain trust. High trust encourages organic advocacy, with loyal customers promoting the brand and resisting competitors, supporting sustained loyalty.