Trust is an integral part of customer relationships and services, including digital services. But what are trust factors, what about the charter of trust – and what role does artificial intelligence play?
Today’s business world consists largely of services provided by people and machines. Artificial intelligence plays an essential role in this, as it is integrated into numerous business processes. But when everything is digitalised, does trust still play an important role at all? This guest article explores this question.
This is an English translation of the article ‘Wem vertraust du mehr: Mensch oder Maschine?’ by Dr Roderik J. P. Strobl, first published in German in INLINE, issue 01/22. The German original is available as a PDF via the download button on this page.
Every person has their own definition of trust, which is why it is not surprising that there are more than 70 academic definitions of the term (Castaldo 2007). One definition, from Rousseau et al. (1998), is cited for the purposes of this article: trust is a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based on the positive expectations of the intentions or behaviour of another.
There are different types of trust, such as basic trust and active trust, which require continuous reconfirmation of their status based on previous interactions (Gustafsson et al. 2020), but also interpersonal trust within groups or public trust, according to Ebert (2009). What is understood by trust or trustworthiness can vary from one culture to another.
Trust is of central importance in the provision of services and has been demonstrated in numerous studies across a variety of services. Trust facilitates interactions between service providers and clients, because fewer control procedures need to be used. To date, trust factors have not yet been operationalised in work processes, as a systematic implementation, such as the introduction of a charter of trust, is still lacking. In financial services for Swiss family offices, for example, there are at least 30 key trust factors that can support trust sustainably, such as service quality through continuous, high-standard fulfilment of client wishes and self-initiative.
A service failure does not usually reduce the existing level of trust to that of a new client. This is especially true if the client has already been well served for a long time and was satisfied with the services (Weinhold-Stünzi 1988). The consequence is the introduction of simple corrective measures. However, if a significant loss of trust occurs, for example one that leads to lasting or significant damage to a client, targeted measures to restore trust must be taken. One of the most important measures in this context is to inform the client immediately of the incident, stating that it is regretted and that the service provider has initiated an investigation.
Trust is also important in the world of online service providers, particularly their three most important trust factors: brand strength, data protection and security, as these attract clients in the long term (Bart et al. 2005).
Services are characterised by their intangible nature. They cannot be touched and therefore cannot be stored or transported. According to Kotler and Bliemel (2001), person-bound services can only be provided in the presence of a person, such as a doctor, or of an object. The situation is different for non-bound services, that is, services characterised by a separation in time and space between production and consumption, such as financial services, which are becoming ever more important.
For the client, assessing the quality of the person performing the service is difficult and therefore carries the risk of non-performance or poor performance. This has improved considerably through the use of artificial intelligence (AI), so that the efficiency and accuracy of today’s service delivery have increased significantly.
Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that deals with technologies which complement, simulate and strengthen human abilities, such as analysing and deciding. But do trust and its trust factors actually play a key role in AI? A cross-national, representative study with more than 6,000 participants from the United States, Canada, Germany, England and Australia found that trust strongly influences the acceptance of artificial intelligence. In particular, the following four trust factors play an important role in all five countries in the study:
Furthermore, trust in AI is low in all five countries in the study, at 28 per cent of participants, because the relevant know-how is not yet available today. Trust also varies from one service to another. For example, participants rated the use of AI in healthcare and in supporting medical diagnoses and treatments as trustworthy. In this context, educational work in the form of information events could help (Gillespie, Lockey & Curtis 2021).
Trust is an integral part of customer relationships and services, including digital services. Artificial intelligence is based on the trust of its users. The systematic integration and formal operationalisation of the soft trust factors through a charter of trust is, to date, still fundamentally lacking in operational processes.
Dr Roderik J. P. Strobl holds a doctorate in business administration from the University of Southern Queensland and has more than 25 years of proven advisory experience in the financial sector. At the time of publication, he was a Relationship Manager Key Clients at Leo Trust Switzerland AG in Zurich, as well as a trust researcher and partner at Keyfactors GmbH.
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This article is aimed at providing a general overview and summary of the issue. It is non-binding, and does not and should not be taken to constitute legal advice.
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