On Wednesday 18th November, Trust Alliance Group welcomed guests to One Moorgate Place in the City of London for our inaugural event, The Trust Factor: Building Consumer Loyalty – an early-evening conversation about why consumer trust matters more than ever, and what organisations can realistically do to build it. Under the chandeliers of this historic venue, the room filled with people from utilities, financial services, retail, tech, regulation and small business for an evening of ideas, challenge and conversation.
Even if you couldn’t be there on the night, this recap walks through the story of the event.
Why talk about trust now?
Simon Palmer, Group CEO of Trust Alliance Group (TAG), opened the evening by explaining why TAG had chosen this theme and this moment.
He traced the organisation’s journey from its roots as Ombudsman Services in energy and communications to its current role as a broader Trust Alliance Group, focused on building, maintaining and restoring trust between businesses and the consumers they serve. He highlighted the ongoing work of the Energy Ombudsman and Communications Ombudsman, resolving complaints and providing redress, and described how the group is now extending into areas such as online trust and safety including plans for an Online Responsibility Network due to launch in 2026, to help make online experiences safer and more transparent.
The aim of the evening, he said, was to bring different perspectives into the same room – brands, consumer advocates and business leaders and start a cross-sector conversation about trust and loyalty that could continue well beyond this single event.
Rory Sutherland: the strange economics of trust
The keynote speaker, Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman at Ogilvy, then took to the stage. In his characteristically energetic, story-led style, he invited the audience to rethink trust – not as a vague, “soft” concept, but as a powerful economic force that organisations often ignore simply because it doesn’t show up neatly in conventional models.
He argued that much of modern business thinking effectively assumes trust is already in place. Traditional economic models often start from the idea of rational consumers with perfect information, which means trust barely appears as a variable. Yet in real life, he noted, most customers are dealing with complex products and services - from second-hand cars to financial products and telecoms contracts, that they cannot fully understand or evaluate.
In that reality, he suggested, people quietly change the question in their minds. Instead of trying to work out whether a product is objectively “the best”, they use a simpler test: whether they trust the person or brand enough to feel safe. A trustworthy seller or organisation can increase willingness to buy and to pay; a lack of trust can render even a technically good product unsellable.
Rory also stressed that trust tends to be asymmetrical and fragile. He referenced a Caribbean proverb that says trust “grows at the speed of a coconut tree and falls at the speed of a coconut” – a reminder that trust may take years to build and moments to lose. When things go wrong, people do not just assess the immediate incident; they reassess the entire relationship.
When trust breaks: parking fines, “do not reply” emails and lost opportunities
To bring these ideas to life, Rory used a series of everyday examples – parking enforcement, online subscriptions, customer service emails - to show how organisations routinely damage trust without even noticing.
He described a parking system where a loyal, honest driver who had paid correctly countless times was treated in the same way as a deliberate fare-dodger the first time something went wrong. No context about their history, no conversation – just an impersonal fine and a rigid process. On a spreadsheet this might look like efficient revenue protection. From the customer’s perspective, it felt like punishment from an organisation that appeared not to care.
He made a similar point about “do not reply” email addresses on outbound communications, which signal that feedback and dialogue are unwelcome; and about subscription models which are designed in such a way that joining is easy, but cancelling is difficult - trapping people in processes that feel unfair or opaque.
Throughout, he returned to the idea of opportunity cost. Boards and finance teams tend to focus on visible costs and revenues, he said, but the damage caused by mistrust is often invisible: the cancelled repeat purchase, the customer who quietly moves to a competitor, the negative story told over dinner or on social media. Those losses rarely appear in reporting dashboards, yet they can be decisive over time.
“Super-trust”
Rory then turned to what strengthens trust.
He suggested that organisations which think in terms of relationships rather than just transactions tend to fare better. A long-standing customer, he argued, is not simply another account number; their history with the organisation should change how they are treated. That might mean being more flexible when there is a problem, recognising loyalty when making decisions or offering gestures of goodwill that acknowledge the value of the relationship.
He also highlighted the role of small discretionary acts of generosity. These might be relatively inexpensive - a waived fee, an unexpectedly helpful call-back, a small credit or a quicker resolution, but they carry a powerful emotional signal: that the organisation sees the person, not just the case number. Moments like that, he suggested, can create what he described as “super-trust”: a deeper reservoir of goodwill that makes customers more resilient when occasional problems arise.
As a practical example, he pointed to work showing that companies whose staff are allowed to call customers back proactively tend to be trusted more than those that only ever respond passively or not at all. Giving people the freedom to say “I’ll look into this and come back to you” implies accountability and care. By contrast, systems designed purely to deflect or contain contact send the opposite message.
The panel: trust under the microscope
After the keynote, consumer rights expert, Martyn James, stepped up to chair a panel discussion that brought together three different vantage points:
- Lisa Webb, Senior Lawyer at Which?
- Paul Wilson, Policy Director at the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB)
- Martin George, Non-Executive Director at Trust Alliance Group.
The conversation unpacked how trust issues play out for consumers, small businesses and organisations dealing with complaints.
Consumer perspective – Lisa Webb
Lisa began by describing the tension she sees among consumers. On one side, people have become more sceptical. Many feel surrounded by complex small print, clever digital design and marketing practices that sometimes seem designed to nudge them into choices that are not in their best interest. On the other side, large numbers of consumers still place too much confidence in certain systems. For instance, assuming that everything on a major online marketplace has been fully vetted for safety and quality, when the reality is it hasn’t.
For her, genuine trust begins with honesty and clarity. That means plain language in contracts and communications, realistic expectations in marketing and a clear sense of what a product or service can and cannot do. It also means taking complaints seriously - not just apologising but fixing root causes when the same problems keep reappearing.
Lisa emphasised that complaint data is incredibly valuable. When issues repeat and nothing changes, it signals that an organisation is treating people as transactions rather than relationships. Regulators and ombudsmen, she said, play an essential role in holding such organisations to account and ensuring people have somewhere independent to turn.
Small business perspective – Paul Wilson
Paul then brought in the perspective of small businesses - the independent shops, local firms and micro-businesses that operate close to their communities.
He explained that for these businesses, trust is almost entirely personal. Their customers are neighbours, regulars, families they see across the counter week after week. Those relationships are built on everyday reliability: remembering names, putting things right quickly and being a visible part of the local fabric. A single broken promise or unresolved issue can have a negative impact.
At the same time, small firms are themselves customers of larger providers - energy companies, payment processors, delivery partners, software platforms and online marketplaces. When those bigger players get things wrong, he noted, the small business is often the one that faces the customer and carries the reputational damage, even when the root cause lies elsewhere in the supply chain.
Paul stressed the importance of fair treatment, transparent contracts and accessible dispute mechanisms for small firms. He underlined the need for regulators and ombudsman services to recognise small businesses not only as providers subject to rules, but as customers who also need protection from unfair treatment.
Complaints and loyalty – Martin George
Finally, Martin spoke about what happens at the point where trust has already been strained and a customer complains.
He introduced the idea of a “reality gap” – the space between what an organisation promises and what it actually delivers. Complaints, he suggested, are where that gap becomes visible. As he put it, “Complaints are gifts” because they reveal what consumers truly experience. Organisations that use complaints to understand and narrow that gap tend to become more trustworthy over time; those that focus only on closing cases risk letting the gap widen.
Martin drew on Trust Alliance Group’s own research, which shows a strong finding: when complaints are handled well, a large majority of people say they feel more loyal to the organisation afterwards. In other words, the way a problem is resolved may matter more for loyalty than whether a problem occurred in the first place.
He also pointed to a shift in how success is being measured. Rather than looking solely at the number of complaints, there is rising interest in metrics such as complaint resolution quality, Net Promoter Score (NPS) and customer lifetime value (LTV). These measures, he said, are better aligned with the long-term nature of trust.
Monopoly sectors and the role of regulation
During the Q&A, the conversation turned to sectors where consumers have no real choice of provider – the water sector being the stand-out example.
The panel acknowledged that in such sectors, regulators and ombudsman services become crucial trust levers. When customers cannot simply switch to a competitor, they need confidence that there are strong rules in place, that performance is monitored and that independent bodies can intervene and help resolve disputes when things go wrong.
For organisations in these markets, rebuilding trust was seen as a long-term endeavour. It requires honest communication about challenges and trade-offs, visible investment in infrastructure and service and a willingness to include consumer groups, ombudsman and regulators as partners in improving outcomes rather than viewing them purely as critics or constraints.
Leaving One Moorgate Place: what we took away
As discussions continued over drinks, several themes kept resurfacing.
One was the idea that trust is not a “nice to have”, but a hard business asset. It affects whether people decide to buy, how they respond when things go wrong and what they say to friends, family and colleagues afterwards. Another was the recognition that trust is largely built, or broken, in the moments where systems meet human reality: the unexpected bill, the confusing letter, the delayed delivery, the glitchy app, the vulnerable customer.
From Rory’s reflections on the economics of trust and the coconut-tree proverb, to the panel’s stories about consumer experiences, small business realities, complaint handling and AI, the evening pointed to a clear conclusion: organisations that treat trust as an ongoing relationship to be nurtured rather than as an automatic by-product of efficient processes, are far better placed to earn loyalty over the long term.
What happens next?
Trust Alliance Group will be using insights from The Trust Factor: Building Consumer Loyalty to inform its ongoing work, from complaints handling and cross-sector standards, to how it can support new sectors.
If you’d like to continue the conversation, explore the data and insights behind these themes, or discuss how TAG can support your organisation in building and restoring trust with your customers, please get in touch with the team.
And if you couldn’t be with us at One Moorgate Place this time, we hope this narrative has brought the evening to life and that we’ll see you at a future event.
