Can I Trust You?
This article is part of Finding the Words, a newsletter that delivers practical insights on the day’s issues.
You probably know the name Craig Newmark. You probably know his name as the founder of Craigslist, a web pioneer, a philanthropist, and—depending on your line of work—a staunch advocate on behalf of trustworthy journalism. (Learn more about that in our conversation on the Mission Forward podcast.) But there’s one equally important part of his bio you may not know: Customer Service Representative.
Newmark often says that after he left the CEO role at Craigslist, he moved into his current role as customer service rep—a position he’s been in for 20+ years.
Some might think it’s cheeky. Honestly, is Craig Newmark a customer service rep? But I can tell you, having interacted with him for the better part of 15 years, I can tell you that no one (read again: no one) has ever been as good at returning emails, calls, and requests as timely as Craig Newmark. Yes, the billionaire, and philanthropist Craig Newmark.
With each interaction we’ve had, I’ve come to trust that Craig Newmark does what he says he’ll do, and chief among those things is getting back to you. It’s not only part of his character but also his brand.
As I write this, I’m in the middle of several brand projects with our clients. I love facilitating brand conversations because they require that the people who hold and maintain any given brand get deeply explicit about what their brand represents and stands for.
Just like Craig is deeply explicit about his role as a customer service rep.
One of the exercises we use to help facilitate these conversations is called “This or That,” which helps identify key traits of a brand’s personality along a visual tightrope: Is this brand cautious or daring, serious or playful? In most cases, the brand isn’t one or another but somewhere in between. And when those characteristics are pulled together across multiple stakeholder groups, they can help form the most accurate grounding for an accurate and trustworthy brand experience.
However, the exercise comes with a warning label: Words need to have meaning, and a brand is more than words. When brands are built on terms that don’t match how an organization (or a person) operates, then the brand may as well be built on a set of empty promises.
For instance, it’s easy to say you’re daring, but if your practices don’t match up, people have no reason to trust you. It’s easy to say you’re caring, but don't expect people to trust you if you’re generally focused on your own self-interests.
Instead, think about your brand like Craig Newmark thinks of himself as a customer service rep—if you can be explicitly clear in who you are and who you’re not—and you commit to living out those words in every interaction, even when it’s difficult, then the more trusted you—and by extension, your brand—will become.
Bottom line: How we show up is more than the words we use or the snappy descriptions we print in our brand books. What we say and what we do need to match up. Over and over again. That's what it takes to build a trusted brand. So, can I trust you?
Want more content like this, and practical guidance to apply these messages to your work? Then, pick up your copy of More than Words, my brand new book which has already hit #1 across all of its categories on Amazon. (THANK YOU!)
Ready for more? Listen to this article on the Mission Forward podcast.
This post is part of the Finding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights direct to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.
