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Executive Interviews: Interview with Richard B Chase
Building trust
February 2011
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By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary
Richard B Chase
Richard B Chase is considered the founder
of the field of Service Operations
Management.
What is trust according to you and why
do you think it is so important for the
companies and companies' boards to
renew and rejuvenate their trust-related
dashboards?
In my view, trust is the belief that a
person will behave ethically, and be true
to his or her word. I frankly don't believe
that adults should be taught to be
trustworthy, anymore than I believe that
we should have a course or training in
ethics. Every religion teaches some form
of golden rule, and good parents preach
and model trustworthiness. The only
dashboard you need is one that tells
management and employees that X% of
your customers trust you. Anything less
than 100% is cause for alarm.
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Companies have to build trust not just
internally - amongst all the immediate
and extended (MNCs having operations
in several companies, companies having
off-shore operations, etc) employees -
but also amongst all the stakeholders.
How do you think companies should go
about designing a unique and very
organized DNA that would ensure it very
high trustworthiness amongst all
employees and stakeholders?
It's pretty simple really. Own up to
mistakes and keep your word. Virtually
every violation of trust by individuals or
corporations becomes worse when they
try to spin their way out of it.
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However, building trust amongst
customers is the biggest challenge that
any company faces. What according to
you are the best ways to build trust
amongst customers? Are there any
lessons from fairly long-lasting brands
such as P&G, Nestle, Louis Vuitton, GE,
Unilever, Rolls Royce, etc?
See answer to question 2. Also, high trust
companies such as these stand behind
the quality of their products.
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How to build trust in online businesses
like e-Bay, Amazon.com, monster.com,
ecch.com, etc?
Make contacting the company easy to do.
This means not only making websites
easy to use, but have representatives staff
the phones. Too many companies want to
force their customers not to talk to them!
What some companies such as
Rackspace (a third party internet
provider) do is have every call answered
by a live person...no long menus to get to
what you want. They also have enough
operators on hand to prove that "your call
is important to us." Rackspace has found
that they get fewer calls since customers
trust that they can get phone help anytime and feel comfortable using the
website.
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The world's financial markets nearly
collapsed in 2008 fall for one reason:
lack of trust. Even big banks refused to
lend to each other because they didn't
trust they would be repaid. What do you
think the banks, The Fortune 500
companies, the regulators and policy
makers and the researchers should learn
from 2008 financial crisis? What are the
trust-related lessons from this crisis?
You can't trust companies where the
processes which underlie their business
are so complicated that no one really
understands how they work. I'm no
expert on the banking system, but I
believe that the banks entry into
brokerage businesses left them as
untrustworthy as guardians of
depositors' money.
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Trust is essential to building enduring
connections with employees, suppliers,
customers and the communities in
which businesses are carried out. How
do you gain trust? What does it take to
build trust? What behaviors and
management practices deepen trust to
create lasting impact, greater
confidence, and sustained success?
1.
The Multi-Branding Strategy Case Study
2. ICMR
Case Collection
3.
Case Study Volumes
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