The Role of Transparency in Building Brand Trust

Written by: Savannah Hayes | October 18, 2024

Trust and transparency go a long way when it comes to customer loyalty. Often, trust is the deciding difference between you and your competitor. A brand that people trust is a brand that people will talk positively about – bringing even more customers and clients through the door. When trust feels hard to come by and hard to build, creating a trustworthy brand can be the difference between sinking or swimming.

Transparency is a key factor in trust. When someone is genuine, honest, and open about what’s going on with them, you’re more likely to trust them. Sharing what’s going on behind the scenes, what’s new and upcoming, and what people can genuinely expect to see from your business into the future is how you build a brand trusted by all.

Statistics on Trust in Recent Years

Trust feels rarer in the workplace:

• 1 in 4 office employees worldwide say they don’t feel trusted at work.
• Only 23% of employees in the U.S. strongly agree that they trust the leaders at their work.
• Most remote employees who don’t feel trusted also don’t trust their management or leadership.

Trust is affecting buying decisions for all:

• 63% of people globally say they buy or advocate for brands based on their beliefs and values.
• 81% of Canadians say that listening to consumers will help build their trust in businesses.
• 24% of people say brand authenticity plays an important role in their decisions, while Gen Z consumers say it matters even more.
• 73% of Baby Boomers say that brand reputation is the number one factor in brand trust.
• Almost 1/3 (32%) of Gen Z participants say brand authenticity plays an important role in their decisions.

Losing trust means losing revenue:

• 85% of Gen Z consumers say that trusting a brand is important to their purchase decisions.
• 62% of Gen Z say that if a brand doesn’t communicate its actions to address an issue, they assume it’s doing nothing or hiding something.
• 49% of Canadians say businesses aren’t doing enough to share trustworthy information.
• Organizations across all industries risk losing 9.5% of their revenue by delivering bad experiences to consumers.

With opinions of corporations hinging on trust, building a brand that’s trustworthy is worth your time and energy. Having a brand that’s transparent, honest, open, and trusted is the best investment you can make.

How Does Transparency Relate to Trust?

Transparency and trust are very similar and they go hand-in-hand. Transparency acts as a building block for trust. After all, you can’t trust someone if you aren’t included in understanding what’s going on.

This concept can be easier to grasp with negative examples. What were some of the worst shopping or purchasing experiences you’ve had? Hidden fees? No warning that the furniture came unassembled? A 45-minute wait time when you only expected it to take 10-20? These situations are frustrating because they didn’t meet your expectations. Yet, they happen all the time because many businesses aren’t transparent.

On the other hand, a business that prides itself on being open, clear, and positive about what’s going on is more likely to win your trust. Being honest about mistakes or potential issues is a great way to help curb expectations in advance.

Why Transparency Matters

There are good reasons why transparency matters. Transparency can be the reason customers choose your brand over competitors. Transparency establishes credibility for your business, boosts your reputation, and the cherry on top is helping you stand out from your competitors.

Establishing credibility

Transparency encourages positive engagement, which can lead to better social proof for your brand. Social proof represents how others see and perceive your brand in the wider social setting. It includes positive reviews, partnerships, and endorsements from other brands and businesses. With these positive relationships, you position your brand as a credible source of information or products in your industry.

Enhancing brand reputation

A positive reputation keeps you top-of-mind for not just your existing customers and clients, but also attract new ones. When people have a positive opinion of your brand, they’ll engage more with your content, products, and services and be more likely to recommend your brand to others.

Differentiating from competitors

Having a positive and trusting relationship between your brand and your target audience is going to make you stand out from the crowd. This is especially important to consider when 71% of consumers say trusting the brands they buy from matters more than it used to.

Three Elements of Transparency

Being clear, genuine, and open all contribute to a communication style that builds transparency and trust. These can be summarized into three main categories: communication, authenticity, and accountability. Here’s how you can improve in each of these areas to improve brand trust.

1. Open communication

Open communication includes both honest messaging and proper accessibility to information. It’s about being clear in what you’re promising to customers and clients. Words are clear and concise, and let people know that you’re being genuine instead of fluffy.

One of the best ways to find out if your messaging sounds honest is to ask yourself, what is this saying? Does the messaging express that clearly? If not, shorten or edit until the messaging feels open, clear, and honest.

Clear and concise messaging also makes your content more accessible. When writing for online reading, Yale University suggests writing at a high-school reading level or lower to provide the most accessible experience. While there aren’t any official rules or guidelines for reading levels in international accessibility guidelines, the easier your content is to read, the more people can read and share it. 

2. Authenticity

Being authentic is about living your values — not just talking about them. You know someone is being authentic when you see them doing and being the things they care about. Whether that’s social innovation, respect, or failing fast, you can tell the difference between someone faking it or truly being the change they want to see in the world.

Of course, that’s not to say you should hide your company values. To be transparent, share your core values and discuss them with your team. Better yet, get feedback from your most trusted customers and clients to ask if you’re hitting the mark. Involving key team members, stakeholders, and your target audience shows transparency and that you value their input.

3. Accountability

Taking responsibility for what goes right and what goes wrong is how your brand shows accountability. For example, if you’re changing your business’s core values, share why things are shifting both for internal employees and externally for customers and clients.

A large part of accountability is owning up to mistakes. Recognizing that something went wrong is the first step to a proper apology. Set the example for other businesses by being open about what happened along with how you’re going to make sure the same mistake doesn’t happen again.

Finally, listen to your clients and customers when they have something to share. Trust is a two-way street after all. Your brand needs to be willing to be open about what goes on behind the scenes but also take into account what people are asking for. The more you trust and transparency you build, the better the brand-customer relationship becomes.

Building the Brand of Your Dreams

Transparency is one key step to building a brand that people trust. With open communication, authenticity, and accountability, you’ll be well on your way to establishing stronger brand loyalty, more positive engagement, and a bigger bottom line than your competitors.

Refresh specializes in helping you discover your brand values and implement them from the inside out. Contact us today to find out how we can help you build the brand of your dreams.