The ‘customer is king’ adage is the primary mantra of most businesses today, resulting in an inordinate amount of effort by firms to increase their knowledge and understanding of customers.

CoreData has developed a proprietary methodology that ‘triangulates’ the customer experience, or looks at it in 3D, rather than along singular lines of analysis.

Traditionally, customer satisfaction research has been through point-in-time collection of general satisfaction measures.

For many firms, this shifted in recent years in favour of focusing exclusively on levels of advocacy – for example how likely an individual is to recommend a given product or service to a family member or friend.

At CoreData we believe each of these is a useful way of assessing the customer experience but that ultimately, in isolation they fall short in providing businesses with a level of insight that could otherwise be attained.

In service based industries particularly, one is likely to have heard the growing mentions and prominence of ‘trust’ and how important it is in running any successful business.

The notion of trust has become even more prevalent for the financial services industry in light of the significant structural issues it has experienced globally over the past two years.

With this is mind, CoreData has developed a three-pronged and contemporary methodology for understanding customers on a deeper level.

This is CoreData 3D, using the CoreData Sie Metrics Index (Ψ Metrics)

The index is a triangulation of customer satisfaction, advocacy and trust/engagement levels, and has more power in revealing the true sentiment of individuals towards a given individual, company and/or institution.

Ψ Metrics (Psy pronounced ‘Sie’ – comprehensive engagement measure)

Satisfaction (overall and product/service)

Intention (use and recommend)

Engagement specific

Trust (trust metrics)

Rapport (soft engagement metrics)

Communication (quality of communication and front line contact)

Loyalty (assessing long term loyalty rather than short term engagement)

By collecting consumer feedback from three distinct points of view the group’s multi-faceted measurement tool is able to produce a more categorical measurement of the client experience.

In essence there are a number of touch-point opportunities for financial services firms where customers form, reinforce or change their opinion of a business and/or the individuals who work in it.

From a trust perspective these are:

Pre-contact - trusted recommendations and preceding reputation or experience.

Initial contact – superficial appearances, no negatives e.g. issues that suggest lack of professionalism.

Main contact – rapport/familiarity building, honesty assessment (emotive factors), information exchange to assess commitment, credibility, priorities and accountability (knowledge factors)

Post-contact – follow up, honesty/commitment confirmation.

There are many conceptions of trust – most involve concepts of faith, belief, confidence, expectation and reliance.

One of the most influential recent discussions of trust (A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 1990) defines it as ‘confidence in the reliability of a person or system’.

However, this somewhat ethereal construct is really derived from many other more tangible concepts that contribute to a multifaceted trust-building process.

This has led to the defining of trust through proxy concepts, e.g. the Edelman Trust barometer, which largely relies on measuring other concepts such as reputation as a proxy for Trust.

Essentially this has created confusion around what trust actually is and how to measure and study it.

Extensive experience in measuring trust, while also leveraging on available research by others, has lead CoreData to consolidate this knowledge into a more workable and consistent definition of the concept of trust, and its use and implications for financial services.

By then combining this with other data loops of the client experience, using the CoreData Sie Metrics Index, the group has devised a very powerful tool for understanding the true sentiment of customers.