Drivers for Loyalty and Trust

Carrying on the results from the research reported by Halliburton and Poenaru from ESCP Europe, they examined what they believe are the drivers of trust (and loyalty). They divided the drivers into their framework of emotional trust and rational trust.

Their main observations suggest the following:

The most important influencing factor of EMOTIONAL TRUST is rational trust, followed by front line employees, management policies and marketing communications.

The most important influencing factor of RATIONAL TRUST is front line employees, management policies and satisfaction with previous experience. The breakdown of these factors as they have derived them with their associated weights are:

Drivers of EMOTIONAL TRUST
1. Rational trust - 56%
2. Trust in front line employees - 16%
3. Management policies - 14%
4. Trust in marketing communications - 9%
5. Trust in self-service technologies - 5%

Drivers of RATIONAL TRUST
1. Trust in front line employees - 21%
2. management policies - 19%
3. Trust in marketing communications - 18%
4. Trust in past customer experience - 18%
5. Trust in self-service strategies - 15%
6. Reputation - 9%

Perhaps the most important observation is that rational trust plays the key role in customer trust. Emotion trust does not appear until some form of rational trust is achieved.

Recall that this research was done for only three industries in the US and the UK; namely banking, insurance and mobile communications. For that reason, these findings must be tempered with the understanding that they may not apply to other countries or other industries.

The bottom line that we can take away from these drivers is a research base that is logical and backed by a structured experiment. We have a starting point.

The next blog based on this research is a customer perspective of what could help build trust. If this research is valid, the customer perspectives noted in the next blog should mirror these research results.