Trust pays off: When you have "trustability," people are eager to buy your products and services. Prices, rates and fees are no obstacle. If the bank is always looking out for its customers' best interests, customers are ready and willing to pay. In fact, they want your bank to succeed.

AuthorPeppers, Don
PositionUSAA Group Inc. - United Services Automobile Association

USAA, THE DIRECT-WRITING INSURANCE COMPANY that specializes in handling the auto and property-casualty insurance needs of military families, has built a reputation over the years as the most trusted financial services firm in the United States, and probably in the world.

The USAA culture is built around empathy and reciprocity, where the corporate edict is always to treat the customer the way you'd want to be treated if you were the customer.

One thing the company has found is that empathy given is empathy returned. More than 20 years ago, after the first Gulf War ended in 1991, USAA sent out refund checks to several thousand of its customers who were returning from military service in the Middle East. Obviously, these customers couldn't have driven their cars back in the United States during the several months they were posted overseas, so USAA suspended the charges for the premiums during the time their soldier-customers were away and proactively sent out thousands of refunds to them when they returned home, at a cost to the company of several million dollars.

But reciprocity is a two-way street. Nearly 2,500 of these customers sent their refund checks back to USAA, with some urging the company just to be there "when we need you."

So here's a question you should be asking yourself: At your own financial institution, under what circumstances would your customers ever send money back to you?

Watching out for your customers' interests

Martha Rogers and 1 opened our book "Extreme Trust: Honesty as a Competitive Advantage" with this story in order to illustrate the power of reciprocity and the benefits of proactively watching out for your customers interests. We think consumers everywhere are beginning to expect more from companies than simply that they not cheat or steal. The world is more social, more interconnected, and more transparent than ever. Consumer expectations are rising, and this means financial services firms throughout the Western world are going to be held to higher and higher standards.

When a company is proactively trustworthy, Martha and I call it "trustable." In addition to th ings such as proactive refunds, trustabilily means preventing a customer from making a mistake, even when that mistake would generate more profit for the business. And more and more businesses are doing this. For example, Amazon will warn you if you already bought a book you're about to order again. The e-cards company Jacquie Lawson will email you to let you know that your annual renewal fee is about to be charged to your credit card. Microsoft reminds its enterprise customers if they haven't redeemed the free IT staff training vouchers they received when they purchased their new SQL. server. And the agrichemicals company Syngnta sends information packets to potato farmers with advice on the best chemicals to use for different pests, even when some of those chemicals are only available from the company's direct competitors.

Financial services executives would be wise to start paying attention to this...

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