The pillars of success: Trust and integrity

From pre-historic times when the concept of commerce was born in the form of bartering to today’s world when the majority of commerce that we care about is preceded with the letter ‘e’ there are two principles that have been consistently synonymous with success – trust and integrity.

Trust in the goods that you are exchanging or purchasing and the integrity (adherence to moral and ethical principles) of the person or company that you are buying from.

Ignore one of these principles and the results could be disastrous for both the buyer and the seller – evidenced by either IT projects failing, data breaches, or a stock price collapse at great financial and emotional cost to everyone involved.

This is why when Infobip was founded we made these two words part of our founding principles, alongside impact and innovation.

For us they are not just words – they are what we live by, because history has shown us that each and every one of our successful customer/investor/employee relationships are based upon them.

As (e)Commerce shifts towards conversational commerce and marketing shifts towards conversational marketing based upon providing a much more conversational experience between buyers and sellers the same principles apply – perhaps in an even more critical way.

To truly engage with your customer/fan/client/partner/stakeholder in a mutually beneficial conversation that will lead to long-term relationships – the foundation must be built on trust and transparency with both sides offering demonstrable integrity.

In the CPaaS world we talk about the number of channels that customers can converse on, the number of connections to global MNO’s, how innovative your feature set is and what sets you apart from the competition, but at the end of the day none of these matter if the core principles of trust and integrity are ever shown to be questionable.

Current challenges facing the technology industry:

Security attacks: Without strong security, verification and authentication measures technology companies are vulnerable to attacks. In some cases there have been data breaches, and others messages leaked online – these ultimately lead to a loss of trust and eventually revenue.

Delayed reconciliation: Siloed data and manual processes can lead to billing disputes and longer reconciliation cycles. Transparency by unifying communications transactions with one platform for onboarding, billing, support, and management is key.

Lack of direct connections: Multiple intermediaries between businesses and telcos leads to low latency, poor deliverability, and unreliability – thereby, detracting from customer experience. Technology providers with direct connections can provide stability to this otherwise scattered landscape.

Afterall, how can we ask our clients and partners to trust us help them build relationships with their customers if our own integrity is questioned?

From clients to end-customers, we’re exposed to a lot more information. Word-of-mouth is no longer confined to one community but available globally. Digitalization and technology have brought with it convenience, an overload of information but also a fair share of scepticism and questions. Making the migration to a more digitized world a gradual process – but when that does happen it’s because there is flicker of trust. Trust in the source, the platform, the provider – and when the conversations take place they’re based on integrity.

At the end of the day, it always comes backs to the basics – the foundation of commerce. Perhaps because of the remoteness of our relationships and the future getting even more digitized, we must take even more care to demonstrate these two values.

While we have moved from the brick-and-mortar version of commerce to a more cloud-based version, building and maintaining trust depends of four core values:

In 130 B.C on the Silk Road, global trading relationships were founded and started the journey that companies find themselves on today. What we trade and how we trade may be very different, but the principles they were founded on are not.

Trust. Integrity. They matter. They will always matter.