One of the tenets of marketing and running a business is building and maintaining trust in your company. That’s because if you lose the trust of customers, they are no longer your customers.

One might think the current climate would induce pessimism in consumers. After all, how can one be expected to trust companies with such high-profile trust crises like the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal and various data breaches?

In banking, BMO Harris Bank‘s recent technical difficulty with the rollout of its new mobile banking app and various enhancements to its online banking platform resulted in a loss of trust that was well documented on the bank’s Twitter page.

According to a recent survey conducted by research consultancy Brand Keys, consumers are demanding a higher level of trust from brands across a variety of industries.

The average level of trust expectation from across all industries has increased by more than 250% since 2018. In 2019, a dozen sectors showed increases of 100% or more in consumers’ expectations for the value of “trust.”

Oddly enough, the survey found that the industry where trust is the most expected from consumers is social networking. Such expectations are growing by 300% yearly.

Online retail ranked second to social networking, at 272%, followed by department stores at 220%, AM & PM News at 205% and instant messaging at 180%.

Banking and finance made up the bulk of the middle of the list. Credit Cards ranked sixth, at 160%, followed by insurance, at 125%, and investment services, at 120%. Online payments ranked 10th, at 117%.

On the contrary, industries like out-of-home coffee, pizza, beverages, and toys, are all under 10% in consumer expectation of trust. This is likely because all of these commodities are ready-at-hand and do not elicit feelings of malfunction.

The survey was conducted in January.

According to Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys, the key to obtaining customer loyalty and trust is emotional-engagement with consumers, utilizing more precise methods of driving purchase behavior rather than traditional brand marketing. Given what the survey bears out, many of the largest name companies have a lot of emotional work to do.

Join us at Bank Innovation Ignite 2019, March 11-12 at the Hyatt Olive 8 in Seattle. Register here.