We hear a lot about trust in global business. It’s become one of the biggest buzzwords in marketing, leadership and customer experience. Every conference has a session on trust. Every strategy document talks about building trust.
But I think we’re missing the most important question of all: how do customers actually decide who to trust?
Because that’s very different from simply asking whether they trust a business.
I believe forming trust is the single biggest growth lever available to organisations today. Customers are more informed, more sceptical and more selective than they’ve ever been. They compare more, question more and often decide whether they trust you long before they ever become a customer.
Understanding how that decision is made is a commercial advantage, not just good marketing.
That’s why I developed The Customer Trust Code™.
The framework starts with a simple premise: trust is built through four universal drivers—Clarity, Consistency, Fairness and Proof. But while every customer is looking for those drivers, they don’t all interpret them the same way. Different generations decode trust differently.
Take Proof, for example.
A Generation Z customer might place enormous value on what real people are saying in Reddit communities or online discussion groups. A Baby Boomer may be more persuaded by written testimonials, professional credentials or established media coverage.
Both are looking for proof. Just in different places.
We hear plenty about trust. We hear almost nothing about how different generations actually decide who to trust.
We tend to talk about trust as though it’s one universal concept, when in reality it’s filtered through age, experience, values, technology and increasingly, artificial intelligence.
It’s why I decided to undertake Australia’s first proprietary research into how customers actually form trust.
Existing studies such as the Edelman Trust Barometer provide valuable insights into trust in institutions, while the Roy Morgan Trust Report measures which brands Australians trust most.
They’re important pieces of research. But neither asks the question I’m most interested in:
How do Australian customers decide who to trust in the first place?
That’s the gap The Customer Trust Code™ research is designed to fill.
With Focus Research as my partner, we’re surveying 1500 Australians from every generation, across every state and territory, city to country, to understand not simply who they trust, but how trust is earned, strengthened and lost.
We’re asking questions like:
At what point do you decide whether to trust a business?
What matters most when deciding whether to trust a company: clarity, consistency, fairness or proof?
What destroys trust instantly?
How willing are customers to give a business a second chance after trust has been broken?
Has the rise of AI changed how much you trust businesses?
These are the kinds of insights that can fundamentally change how organisations communicate, market, sell and serve customers.
The response has been extraordinary. More than 1400 Australians have already participated, and we’re just weeks away from reaching that target of 1500 before launching the inaugural findings later this year.
Importantly, this isn’t intended to be a one-off report. My goal is for The Customer Trust Code™ to become Australia’s annual benchmark for understanding customer trust, giving organisations an ongoing view of how expectations continue to evolve.
I’ve always believed strategy should be evidence-based. Every keynote I deliver is grounded in research because data-informed decisions lead to better outcomes and smarter allocation of resources. They remove guesswork and replace assumptions with insight.
The findings from The Customer Trust Code™ will become a central part of my latest keynote The Trust Deficit, where I’ll share practical strategies organisations can use to strengthen customer trust and accelerate growth.
Bookings for my 2027 speaking calendar are now open, and I still have some opportunities available for the remainder of 2026.
Because in the years ahead, I don’t think the organisations that win will necessarily be the loudest, the biggest or even the cheapest.
I think they’ll be the ones that understand, better than anyone else, how today’s customers decide who to trust.
And that understanding starts with The Customer Trust Code™.