Thursday, November 3, 2011
By Ryann T,
by Natalia Klishina Just the other day, I joined the 805,000 people who have unsubscribed from Netflix. First there were the price hikes earlier this summer, then plans to rebrand its DVD rental service as Quikster, then an announcement that it was canceling those plans (probably in a frantic effort to appease all the upset customers and investors). None of these events were all that significant on their own, and even combined probably didn't greatly impact their customer base. What they did do, is make Americans lose trust in the company as a whole. So let us all take a lesson from Netflix and make an effort to stay trustworthy. If you've read my previous posts, you know that I don't think any argument is complete without some numbers. So voila. According to the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer, honesty and trust are more important to customers than the quality of the product or service. And just take a look to some of these other statistics from the same report:
  • 77% of people will not buy products or services from a company they do not trust.
  • 91% of people would buy a product from a company they trusted.
  • 55% would pay a premium for products or services when trust is present.
  • 72% are willing to share the reasons why they don't trust a company with people they don't know.
Not only are people astronomically less likely to buy from you if they don't trust you, but they're also just as likely to tell others not to trust you either. On the bright side, if they do trust you, they'll buy from you and even pay extra. That's incentive enough for us.