When customers trust your business, magic happens. I’ve spent years studying customer service and experience, and I’ve found that the confidence you build with customers isn’t just nice to have—it’s essential to your business survival.
Think about the last time you had a problem with a company you trusted versus one you didn’t. With the trusted company, you likely approached the conversation differently. You were more patient as you explained the situation and more open to their suggestions. With an untrusted company, you probably went in with your guard up, ready to fight for what you believed was right.
The Power of Customer Confidence
When your customers have confidence in you, the opportunity to create an excellent customer experience dramatically improves—especially when things go wrong. This confidence doesn’t appear magically; it comes from consistency. Your customers know what to expect, particularly when problems arise. They know you’ll take care of them.
One of my subscribers, Shan Kiteon Brown of Market Culture, made an insightful comment that really resonated with me: when you have customer confidence, especially in difficult situations, customers work with you rather than against you. This observation is spot-on and worth exploring further.
What Happens When Customers Trust You
Trust transforms how customers respond to service issues. When customers trust your business:
- They give you the benefit of the doubt when mistakes happen
- They share more information about what went wrong, making it easier to fix
- They accept reasonable solutions rather than demanding unrealistic ones
- They remain calm and respectful, making it much easier to help them without having to de-escalate anger
This relates directly to what I call the “customer service recovery paradox“—where a customer’s perception of your company can actually be higher after you’ve resolved a problem than if the problem had never happened at all. But this paradox only works when there’s a foundation of trust.
Building Trust Through Consistency
I cannot emphasize this enough: confidence comes from consistency. Even if a customer has only done business with you once or twice, trust is earned through all the positive touchpoints of those interactions.
Every interaction, big or small, builds confidence. When you answer the phone promptly, return calls quickly, respond to emails in a timely manner, and keep your promises, you’re building trust. These actions may seem small, but they accumulate into a powerful reservoir of goodwill.
When something does go wrong—and notice I say “when,” not “if,” because problems are inevitable—you’ll have those past positive interactions working for you. Your ability to resolve issues successfully may have been determined long before the problem ever occurred.
Yes, we need to react to complaints and problems when they happen. But remember that your ability to resolve those issues successfully may have been determined long before the problem ever occurred.
The Long Game of Customer Experience
Too many businesses focus solely on how to react when things go wrong. While having good recovery processes is important, I believe the groundwork for successful service recovery happens in every interaction that comes before the problem.
Every touchpoint is an opportunity to build the confidence that will make future problems easier to resolve. It’s determined by how you treat customers and manage every interaction—the small ones as well as the big ones.
The next time you’re training your team on customer service recovery, remind them that the best recovery strategy starts long before any problem occurs. It starts with building trust through consistent, reliable service in every customer interaction.
When you have their trust, customers work with you rather than against you—and that makes all the difference in creating amazing customer experiences that keep them coming back.
