Extreme Trust: Honesty as a Competitive Advantage [Hardcover]

Don Peppers (Author), Martha Rogers (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 26, 2012

If you accidentally try to order the same song twice from iTunes, you’ll be warned that you already own it. Not because it would be illegal or unethical for Apple to profit from your forgetfulness. There’s a clear busi­ness reason: the leaders of iTunes realize there’s no better way to make you trust them than to be totally honest when you least expect it.

 

In the age of the Web, smartphones, and social networks, every action an organization takes can be exposed and critiqued in real time. Nothing is local or secret anymore. If you treat one customer unfairly, produce one shoddy product, or try to gouge one price, the whole world may find out in hours, if not minutes. The users of Twitter, Yelp, Epinions, and similar outlets show little mercy for bad behavior. The bar for trust­worthiness is higher than ever and continuing to rise.

 

Don Peppers and Martha Rogers argue that the only sane response to these rising levels of transpar­ency is to protect the interests of customers proac­tively, before they have a chance to spread negative buzz—even if that requires spending extra money in the short run to preserve your reputation and cus­tomer relationships in the long run. The payoff of gen­erating extreme trust will be worth it.

 

The authors show how this trend is playing out in many different sectors. Among their insights:

• Banks will soon have to stop relying on overdraft charges, because depositers will expect advance warnings of low balances.
• Retailers will be expected to remind shoppers when they have unused balances on their gift cards.
• Credit card companies will have to coach customers on avoiding excessive borrowing.
• Cell phone providers will win more business by helping customers find the cheapest calling plans for their usage patterns.
• Health insurers will make recommendations based on improving long-term health, not increasing their revenue.

 

The companies that Peppers and Rogers call “trustable” remember what they learn from each inter­action, and they use these insights to create better and better customer experiences. They focus on win­ning the long-term battle for trust and loyalty, even if the dollar value of that trust is hard to quantify.

 

For instance, in 2009 Best Buy launched Twelp­force, a service that responds to customer questions and problems via Twitter. It’s manned part time by more than two thousand employees. In its first year of operation Twelpforce responded to nearly thirty thousand inquiries—which not only improved cus­tomer service but also helped educate and motivate the associates who participated. The short-term profit might be small but the impact on trust is enormous.

 

With a wealth of fascinating research as well as practical applications, this book will show you how to earn—and keep—the extreme trust of everyone your company interacts with.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“‘Trust is the new black.’ We all rely on those we trust, and that’s particularly true when it comes to business. Extreme Trust talks about how trust is increas­ingly critical in business, and how trustworthiness, or its absence, has become increasingly visible. It discusses what trustworthy behavior means in business, and how to change corporate culture to make it more genuinely trustable.”

—Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist.com

 

“This book is a must-read for anyone leading an organization. The future is com­ing and it’s coming fast. Peppers and Rogers’s insights and advice will lead you through this remarkable time of change. Simply indispensable.”
—John Costello, chief global marketing and innovation officer, Dunkin’ Brands, Inc.

 

“What I loved about this book is that it forces the reader to stop using tradi­tional ways of looking at business value (efficiency, productivity) in order to understand the trust crisis. And the further I got, the more I realized it really is a crisis. Lack of trust in business is almost something we now take for granted, as a normal cost of doing business. It’s why the exceptions are so remarkable. Extreme Trust has shown us not only why it is so wrong that we take that for granted, but why it is so costly. It’s the first book that really lays out a prac­tical model for the evolution of business—big business—and it is brilliant.”

—Jennifer Evans, CEO of Sequentia

 

“Despite the shifting sands of time, Peppers and Rogers remind us what we never should have forgotten. Extreme trust is the only foundation to build on. This is the best book yet from this insightful duo!”

—Marilyn Carlson Nelson, chairman of Carlson

 

“Once again, the remarkable team of Peppers and Rogers nails it. Ignore them at your peril.”

—Seth Godin, author of Linchpin

About the Author

Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D., have coau­thored eight books, including the global bestseller The One to One Future. Widely credited with igniting the global customer strategy revolution in business, they are the founders of the Peppers & Rogers Group, a global management consulting firm whose clients have included Vodafone Group, Cigna, American Heart Association, Nordstrom, Absa Bank (Barclays), and HM Revenue & Customs (UK). Globally renowned keynote presenters and boardroom strategists, Peppers is an expert blogger at fastcompany.com and Rogers is on the faculty at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Visit www.extremetrustbook.com

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover (April 26, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591844673
• ISBN-13: 978-1591844679
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #102,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Don Peppers was the oldest of five children raised in a small town in Missouri, and he's always had eclectic interests. He earned a degree in astronautical engineering at the US Air Force Academy and then received a masters in public affairs from Princeton, with a concentration in foreign policy. But he has never worked a day in either of these fields. After serving in the Air Force his first civilian job was as an economist at an oil company, and then he became director of accounting at a regional airline. At the airline he gravitated into the marketing field, and eventually went to work at a series of advertising agencies, where he gained a reputation as a successful "rainmaker," concentrating on winning new clients. He wrote about some of his successful (and unsuccessful) pitches in his book Life's a Pitch: Then You Buy. His collaboration with Martha Rogers, a former advertising professor, began in 1990, and their first book together, The One to One Future, was published 3 years later. Since then they have co-authored eight more books together, the most recent being Extreme Trust: Honesty as a Competitive Advantage.

Don and Martha founded a management consulting firm, Peppers & Rogers Group, which now has consultants and offices on five continents and specializes in helping companies improve their customer-facing processes, from sales and marketing issues to customer service, communications, social media, and employee culture. They like to say their mission is "to make the world safe for customers."

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunningly insightful; stopped me in my tracks April 26, 2012

By Bruce Kasanoff

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

17 years ago, I bought The One to One Future and ended up reading the whole book in my car. I literally could not put it down, it was filled with such a clear vision of how business needed to change. That book changed the path of my career, and life.

This one is even better.

It has observations that stop you dead in your tracks, they are such fundamental truths about the ways that corporate culture must change. For example, authors list six examples of trustworthy companies in the 20th vs. 21st century. Until now, a trustworthy company "manages and coordinates all brand messaging to ensure a compelling and consistent story." But now such a company "recognizes that what people say about the brand is far more important than what the company says."

Absolutely, dead-on right. How many companies understand this? Very few.

Later in the book, the authors tell the tale of a United Airlines captain, John McFadden, who writes personal thank-you notes to high value passengers who fly on his plane. They observe, "In the final analysis, McFadden values empathy and reciprocity above everything else. He refuses to just be an employee. He insists on being a human."

Stopped me in my tracks again. The future of business lies in weaving Captain McFadden's attitude into corporate cultures, and forcing out mindless obsessions with compliance, efficiency and spin.

This book is filled with humanity, but not of the blue-sky dreamer type. Peppers and Rogers argue persuasively that there is no profitable alternative but to operate in a more "trustable" way. Once again, they see the future more clearly than others, and they understand that with everything and everyone and everywhere linked together... there will be nowhere to hide, and no room for deceit.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Now is better than we think August 8, 2012

By Curtis Bingham

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

If the future of commerce forecast by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers in their new book, Extreme Trust: Honesty as a Competitive Advantage, turns out to be even partly true... but then, it already is partly true.

In a nutshell, the premise of the book is that while many companies today are trustworthy - they mostly do what they say they will do - they are not trustable unless or until they proactively, and with competence, promote and safeguard their customers' best interests. Thus, trustability - relentlessly scrutinized and monitored via social media and the inevitable transparency enabled by technology and human connectivity - will soon become the new standard by which businesses will succeed or fail.

That's a standard I can live with.

Now, I will admit that while I was delighted to feel so good, so encouraged, as I read the book's opening chapter, those very emotions made me skeptical and suspicious that what I was feeling originated from reading what I wanted to read and not what really describes the world-out-there. But the further I went into the book, the greater, the deeper, the more compelling became the authors' case. I realized that the book isn't a forecast; it's a startling and exhilarating interpretation of what previously appeared to be chaotic socio-economic events and dynamics. Their use of the dramatic, up-to-the-minute anecdotes and examples with which our current marketplace abounds is entertaining and powerfully drives home the reality of the brave new world of commerce that is emerging all around us. The transition - happening now - is not and won't continue to be easy or painless, but we all know that already. What we may not know is how much hope there is.

I consider myself late to the social media party; in fact, I'd say I'm still in the foyer greeting the hosts. But another rich facet of this book is the incredible context it provides and insight it offers on social media for latecomers like me; how and why it works; how and why it has become so prevalent and will only continue to grow; the larger function that it performs.

There's far more depth and breadth to this book than I can convey in a product review (check out the - count `em: 45 - pages of notes in the back), but I feel I would be remiss if I did not point out, at least, that in addition to their amazing explanations for the promising new development that is trustability, the authors go much, much further by providing the understanding, the guidance, and the direction to navigate the profound changes that will accompany and have already resulted from this phenomenon.

I highly recommend this book. Anyone currently wrestling with implementing and delivering on the promise of customer centricity, with all that entails, will find this invaluable resource a powerful, visionary guide by which to steer their efforts. And everyone who has ever had a lousy customer experience and longs for better days and better treatment at the hands of businesses and corporations will find it a thought-provoking and extremely satisfying read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELENTE!! June 7, 2012

By jose yamagoshi

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

La perspectiva de Don Peppers y Martha Rogers,en Extreme Trust, nuevamente nos sorprende volviendo a los origines de las relaciones humanas. Confianza, Honestidad, Integridad valores imprescindibles y vitales para los negocios hoy en día!
JoseCarlos Yamagoshi
Interaction Perú