Alumni Profile
ALUMNI NEWS MAGAZINE | Summer 2022
That’s the message that Natalie drives home with each of her clients. Natalie is founder and president of Success Through Trust Inc. She works with companies, advising and training them on how to build and measure customer trust. She is the author of The Power of Trust: How Top Companies Build, Manage, and Protect It; and creator of the Client Trust Index™, an evidenced-based diagnostic that quantifies a company’s Trust Equity™.
Her framework, tools and methodology are based on science and evidence. She was recognized as one of Canada’s Most Inspiring Women Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs in 2021. Natalie’s been named one of the world’s Top Thought Leaders in Trust for five consecutive years by Trust Across America and has been recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Through decades of research and experience, Natalie has focused on what she regards as the single most important element for success: solid customer/client relationships that are built on trust.
“People are better informed, better educated and have more access to information than ever before,” she says. “The result is customers, employees and stakeholders are more skeptical and inclined to question and challenge organizations. Now, more than ever, they want companies to have a social compass.” Although she didn’t realize it at the time, Natalie’s career path and her groundbreaking work on trust had their roots in her time spent as a student-caller at UNB raising money for the university. The alumni she spoke to and their stories iterated the importance that personal experiences had on their connection to the university, and their willingness to support it.
“I never knew who I was going to call,” she says. “I would get a list of alumni prospects to call from all over the world. I could tell early in the call who had a great relationship with UNB, and I learned that their loyalty was based on their experience and their trust in UNB. Trust is the foundation of customer experience and loyalty.”
Natalie coined the term trust equity — the amount of trust customers and stakeholders have in the organization — in 2011. According to her, trust is both measurable and manageable. She also says trust has never been more important than it is today. As global economies struggle to respond to inflation, supply chain disruptions and the growing power of the online marketplace, companies and institutions feel the earth shifting beneath their feet. How to respond and keep ahead of those shifting realities is the ultimate question.
“That’s why building trust equity is so important,” says Natalie. “When times are tough and a project can’t be finished on time or a product is late, if trust equity is high, customers are more forgiving,” Natalie says studies show people worldwide are far more likely to buy from companies, or donate to organizations, that they trust. “There’s a very strong business case for trust. People buy from companies they trust. People want to work with leaders and companies they trust. Trust impacts the top line and the bottom line.”
Natalie was one of four trust experts from around the world quoted in this 2022 Economist Impact study. The report examined the concept of trust in business relationships and shed light on what drives organizations to build it, what challenges they face and what actions they have taken. “The key takeaway from the report is that businesses need to close the trust gap with customers to address supply chain issues, customer expectations, and ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) scrutiny.”
Natalie says that sometimes people forget that companies are made up of people and building trust comes down to their interactions. “A company can have the best technology, the best systems, the best processes and all the bells and whistles, but what it comes down to is the people.”
“The number one trust risk point for every organization is people. How they communicate, how they behave and how they serve their customers. Building trust is a skill that you can learn, cultivate and develop.”
Through training programs, consulting, live and virtual workshops, presentations and her online course, called Becoming a Trusted Advisor, Natalie is on a mission to help business owners and leaders around the world grow their companies by building relationships of trust.
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