Earlier this year
Trustpilot published its first ever Transparency Report seeking to show how it operates and what it's doing to combat fake reviews and misuse of its platform. The company's founder and CEO noted that “if we are to be successful, we have to be more open, more transparent and honest in the way that we work.”
It's a clear signal of a trend we noted in our
predictions for 2021, and expanded on in our Digital content trends ebook: brands need to take honest communication seriously if they want to build trust in a digital-first world.
"The era of information bankruptcy"
Misinformation and dishonesty are not remotely new in any walk of life. But there's no doubt that people's ability to trust – in government, in the media, in emails and texts purporting to be from trustworthy organizations – was put under particular pressure by the upheaval and fears of 2020. It's not really surprising that the past year's sharp increase in reliance on digital services has been accompanied by a growing awareness of
online review manipulation (and Trustpilot's publicizing of its efforts to control it).
Nor can there be any doubt that the pandemic-related onslaught of falsehoods has contributed to the record lows of trust in all information sources reported by the 2021
Edelman Trust Barometer.
The Trust Barometer also shows that while trust in government actually increased at first during the pandemic, it has dropped right down again since May 2020.
"This is the era of information bankruptcy,” said Edelman CEO Richard Edelman. “We’ve been lied to by those in charge, and media sources are seen as politicized and bias[ed]. The result is a lack of quality information and increased divisiveness."
Opportunity for businesses
Interestingly, the erosion of trust in government and the media leaves businesses with an opportunity to step in and fill the void. For Trust Barometer respondents, business is now the only trusted type of institution, and the only one seen as both competent and ethical. As Edelman notes, business reputation has been boosted by rapid vaccine development and adoption of new ways of working, as well as people's renewed respect for local businesses during lockdown.
It's all relative, though. Trust in business isn't exactly sky-high, with an index score of 61 just exceeding the trust threshold of 60. And business leaders are suspect. Less than half of respondents (48%) trust CEOs to do what's right and more than half (56%) believe that business leaders purposely try to mislead people by saying things they know to be false.
So businesses certainly have work to do to build trust with customers and prospects (employees trust their own employer and CEO significantly more than they trust other businesses and CEOs). This opportunity to step up should not be wasted.
Around two-thirds are looking to CEOs to take the lead on change and to hold themselves accountable to the wider public.
Your biggest opportunity is guarding information quality
What should you be doing to build trust? As we predicted, it turns out that what people want more than anything is simply to know that they can trust the quality of the information you give them. This does more to build trust than sustainable practices, a robust response to COVID-19, driving prosperity or promoting long-term thinking over short-term profits (all of which are still also important builders of trust).
Does this surprise you? It doesn't surprise us. But then, we're in the business of helping organizations to transform the quality of their content and communication, so we see the impact all the time.
If your business wants to become a guardian of information quality and explore other ways to build trust in a digital-first world, take a look at our digital content trends hub. There you'll find our ebook and other materials addressing the key trends now influencing how well you can connect with your audiences.
