Earlier this month, the great and the good convened at the World Economic Forum in Davos. One of the topics they discussed was how the model for trust needs to evolve once again to keep pace with change in the fourth industrial revolution. Commentary in the lead up has talked about the concept of Trust 4.0 and building interdependent trust and in line with this, IBM announced its new policy on precision regulation of AI – defining an appropriate risk-based AI governance policy framework based on three pillars: Accountability, Transparency, Fairness and Security.
I’m honoured and privileged to have worked for IBM – a company that really walks the talk when it comes to values of Dedication to every client’s success, Innovation that matters, for our company and for the world and most importantly Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships.
IBM has long recognised the value of Trust in the model I call the ‘Virtuous Circle’ – the interdependent relationships and irrefutable linkage between employees, customers and brand performance, all underpinned by Trust. I believe it is this foresight and commitment, and the fact that trust has always been very firmly at the centre of this circle, that has been key to IBM’s success over its 107-year history.
It’s also the fact that closing the circle has always started and ended with the IBMer is so important. The company makes huge efforts to ensure every employee feels included, empowered to make a difference and engaged. This has to be the bedrock for strong customer relationships over the long-term – as measured by our NPS and engagement metrics. Just as NPS provides strong descriptive and predictive power with customers, it works just as well among employees. An NPS system can only progress when customer feedback is incorporated into our daily operations and the loop with the employees is closed.
This is not a new concept, as the importance and interlinkage of these three areas has been discussed and established for years. Take the Service Value profit chain devised by Harvard in the 1980s. So, while businesses today measure all three aspects of the ‘virtuous circle’, Trust is still an abstract concept and there is no metric that quantifies it. Many organisations face the challenge of trying to stay ahead of the technological advancements that continue to fuel more interdependent relationships, whilst rebuilding trust at a time when it is at an all-time low, especially when it comes to data privacy and use of AI.
- Lack of trust costs global brands $2.5 trillion per year. There are multiple studies showing trust in global brands is low in countries with mature digital ecosystems
- In today’s fast world, customers not only expect action, but speed and agility is extremely crucial. A book that explains this concept well is Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey.
- In a Data driven economy, data is readily available. What is not are ‘insights’ we glean from it and ‘actions’ we need to take based on it. This was reinforced in a recent IBV study – it’s those who are building a social contract of trust around data gathering and sharing, who will lead today’s data economy.
Understanding and learning how to infuse trust in all our relationships is both a science and art. My takeaway is that to truly build trusted relationships with our customers, employees and partners the most important factors are Transparency, Reciprocity and Authenticity.
Transparency: While positive feedback is encouraging, negative feedback helps in growth and optimizing. Hence, being transparent and acknowledging both negative and positive feedback is crucial.
Reciprocity: Gratitude is nothing without action. In IBM, we stress not only on acknowledging every customer feedback but also to take action and close the loop with the customer within 24 hours of receiving the feedback.
Authenticity: Being true and authentic to one’s values, priorities and end-goal. As our Chairman, Ginni Rometty says, “You have to be willing to reinvent everything about yourself, except for who you really are.”
So, how should we be reinventing our approach to ensure this model continues to deliver benefits and act as a North Star through the next decade?
Use technology – Data and AI: IBM helps enterprises work with massive data and leverage it to better cater to customer needs. Internally we use Data & AI to cull through terabytes of customer feedback and highlight the most pressing client issues.
Continuous feedback and action: While technology helps us reach out to our customers and make sense of verbatims, it also helps us act on feedback in real time and take action to close the loop – empowering employees with valuable customer insights to make better decisions and improve customer experience.
Co-create: The importance of finding solutions in partnership with employees or customers will continue to grow, which is why it is so important that we build cultures that support this. This approach in turn engenders trust.
Back to the fundamentals: Trusted human relationships are built on transparency, reciprocity and authenticity and we need to ensure these values are at the front and centre at all times. And you have to take an inside-out approach and start with your employees
D&I – D&I is core to IBM’s strategy as well as value system. It helps IBM to be more innovative and efficient by looking at our clients’ needs and issues more holistically and minimizing the bias. Most-diverse enterprises were also found to the most innovative, according to this Harvard Study.
As we embark on the twenty twenties and I open my next chapter after an amazing four and a half years at IBM, putting family at the centre of my circle, I would love to hear your thoughts on the virtuous circle and any best practices you have followed to make this a consistent and standard practice.