Digital trust is valued by consumers and is associated with economic expansion. Know how?

Digital trust fosters growth

Winning customers' trust is crucial to any company's success, and this confidence should be placed in the company's products, services, mission, and values. What if the things that make your business thrive make clients less likely to trust you?

That's the problem many CEOs face today as they attempt to digitally transform their companies and integrate technology into every part of their operations. Digital tools have made it easier for organizations to collect sensitive information about their customers and follow them around the web using "digital breadcrumbs." This has caused companies to invite more customer trust.

Before ever interacting with a digital platform, consumers may access a wealth of data about the goods and services they want and the businesses that provide them. Due to the wide availability of digital products and services, stakeholders are used to asking the companies they work with for more information. In exchange, individuals usually offer the corporation access to sensitive information about themselves and their lives. They do so based on the promise of transparency regarding the data's storage and subsequent use, including through AI or other decision-making technologies. 

A recent poll found that 86% of Americans think it's more important than ever for businesses to be transparent, and 73% are willing to pay extra for products that make this claim. 

Explaining the importance of digital trust

According to consumers, having faith in the digital world is important, and most believe the businesses they patronize are trustworthy.

The majority of customers feel their preferred brands offer the pillars of digital trust, which we describe as the belief that a company will keep personal information safe, implement strong cybersecurity measures, deliver reliable artificial intelligence (AI)-powered goods and services, and be transparent about its AI and data usage.

Do you know

It's been found that businesses that put in the most effort to build consumer confidence online are the ones least likely to have had a negative AI incident.

Here are reasons why consumers value digital trust h3

A report based on a survey by Mckinsey & Company has revealed the value of digital trust.

• This survey reported that nearly half of respondents stated they have stopped doing business with a company because of concerns over the security of their personal information after discovering such problems were unfounded. People who frequently shop online, who buy for their businesses often, and people in the Millennial and Gen Z generations have a higher rate of this.
• According to the survey, 14 percent of respondents ceased doing business with a company last year (2021) because they disagreed with its ethical beliefs, and 10 percent did so as they learned about a data breach, even if they did not know if their data had been compromised.
• Many customers continued to do business with well-known brands that they were sure would keep their information safe. 
• More than half of respondents reported that they are hesitant to make an online purchase or use a digital service from a firm if they have heard negative things about how they treat their customers' personal information.

This highlights the importance of digital trust to customers, whose loyalty must be earned.

‍Ways to Achieve Digital Trust

Establishing digital trust is a multi-step process that must begin with making it a company-wide focus. Though difficult, you can make it possible in digital contexts with the right plan.

Four Pillars of Digital Trust

Building trust means more than just avoiding bad things like data breaches. Leveraging digital tools and technology can positively facilitate transformation and confidence to increase transparency, strengthen ethical and responsible practices, boost data privacy, and harden security, which we call the four pillars of digital trust.

‍Pillar 1: Transparency and Accessibility

Trust in an organization's discretion and loyalty to producing high-quality digital products and services can grow when the company is transparent about its digital business operations and provides clear disclosures. This can be accomplished by:

• Facilitating customer evaluation of the company and its products.
• Providing easy access to and comprehension of business terms such as additional fees, privacy policies, and terms of service.
• Clarifying the operation of self-learning algorithms.
• Providing transparency into supply chains.

Pillar 2: Ethics and Responsibility

As technological advancements present ethical problems by endowing organizations with more authority, a company's willingness to work for the benefit of its customers can increase its credibility and trustworthiness.

Companies may strengthen the second pillar of trust and enhance their reputation as ethical and responsible stewards of digital technologies by

• Resolving complaints with sensitivity and promptness.
• Putting an end to misinformation in its tracks.
• Using tools that measure fairness and detect bias to promote inclusion.
• Implement safeguards to protect stakeholders' interests and digital controls to avoid unethical or inappropriate technology use.

Pillar 3: Privacy and control

Respecting customers' desires over what data to acquire and how to manage it enables organizations to obtain more permissions to handle customer information and provide customized services.

Here is how businesses may utilize digital technologies to promote the protected exchange of data and establish the third pillar of trust:

• Providing users with complete autonomy over their data.
• Increasing the precision of customer data.
• Careful handling of personally identifiable information.

Pillar 4: Security and reliability

With a heightened awareness of cyber dangers and a growing reliance on smart devices, customers are increasingly choosing firms that employ advanced security and reliability technology.

In this environment, firms can distinguish themselves by establishing the fourth pillar of digital trust:

• Reducing impersonation and fraud by verifying the identities of those claiming to be consumers or providers.
• Notifying users proactively of any suspicious account activity.
• Errors and fraudulent activity are being reduced by using automation and AI.

Having grasped its significance and methods of attainment, let's now determine how digital trust supports economic growth.

Do you know

According to a World Economic Forum (2022) forecast, identity verification is crucial to establishing digital trust.

Achieving Digital Trust via Digital Transformation

The widespread adoption of digital transformation is heralded as a game-changer in the quest for exponential development and a means to alter traditional company practices radically. 

Do you know

Businesses at the forefront of digital trust are more than twice as likely as their global peers to report revenue and earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) growth in the double-digit range.

So what should a digital trust leader do?

Organizations can build trust by putting leadership, governance, strategy, principles, policies, processes, and culture in place-attracting stakeholders and investors, where the technology will serve as a tool for establishing digital trust.

However, trust cannot be established permanently using digital tools alone. Mastering the trust equation requires a concerted effort across leadership and governance, strategy, beliefs, policies, processes, and culture, as well as the correct foundation and guardrails. Integrating trustworthiness into an organization's culture requires the joint efforts of many departments and groups, including IT, marketing, sales, operations, and external partners. Maintaining focus on the organization's primary mission and guiding values is essential for achieving alignment across departments and functions.

Different businesses and sectors will be at various points in their digital transformations, and building trust with stakeholders over the long run is challenging. For this reason, companies must implement tailored strategies to aid their trust development.

Digital leaders in the organization can play a pivotal role in easing the way. 

1. As a first step, they could assess whether or not their coworkers in other departments are aware of the potential strategic, operational, reputational, and financial benefits of gaining stakeholder trust. 
2. Secondly, they could inquire into whether or not the ongoing transformation initiatives have properly factored in trust concerns from the get-go. 
3. They might require that trust be taken into account from the get-go rather than as an afterthought in future transformation projects.
4. Consequently, organizations can develop long-term digital trust and strengthen relationships with their stakeholders through transformation activities that include the four pillars of trust, made possible by digital technologies.

Organizations can develop trust in products and services that employ AI, digital technology, and data to fulfill consumer expectations and drive economic expansion. Digital trust pioneers have a 1.6-fold higher chance of outperforming the market average in revenue growth of at least 10%.

Meeting customers' expectations and the regulatory agencies' criteria for digital trust can help businesses grow revenue, reduce risk, and create a more secure world.