What can we learn from Wells Fargo?

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Although most of us in small business can’t even imagine operating a company of that size, a lot of what has happened in recent days concerning WF is applicable.

The first thing we can recognize, trust is something that builds over long periods of time but, can be torn down over the simplest of issues in an instant. I believe that trust issues sometimes get lost in determining what may be wrong or right. The customer may be wrong, but I am not their judge, I am a trusted solution.

Trust starts when you begin to understand your customer’s needs and then execute around their best interest. Keeping in mind that the choice of who is your customer is always in your court. I can stop serving any customer I please. Not that I want to, but I want to always hang on to the no deal aspect of any negotiation. Once this is gone then I am now the slave to the customer.

Secondarily issues of trust are always coming up, a late shipment, delivery of less than what was expected or any other unmet expectation. If trust is your true goal with your customers then you will always seek, no matter how small, to correct unmet expectations with full customer support. I have watched fellow business owners debate the finer articles of a contract and feel that they have won the battle of this unmet expectation. In many cases it may come down to the documents that was signed, but in the end our role in trust is always the same- Seek ways to maintain the trust.

Wells Fargo created a system of competition that destroyed trust and then executed a correction of firing 5,000 employees as a solution. These employees may have needed a career change but that still doesn’t solve my trust issues.

Keep in mind that as a small business we only have our mouth to build trust with customers. The best time to build trust is during unmet expectations presented by our customers. We should ponder the following points before weighing in:

· The customer is answering to someone else who also feels expectations were not met.

· Until we fully understand the unmet expectations we are fact finding. The solution lies in the facts, not judgment.

· Look past the behavior. We all have done it. Something doesn’t go as planned and we just react to the unmet expectation with behavior that is not productive.

I find it interesting that EI has become a hot topic within the social media community yet the C-Suite seems to have the least Emotional Intelligence.