Why building trust in client relationships is one of our core values
The fundamental value of trust needs to be carefully built up over time. Trust is a reciprocal arrangement where one party puts faith in the other and bonds are formed, relationships are made stronger, partnerships are progressed. However, while trust may take hours, days or years to be established, it can be destroyed in seconds or minutes.
At Research Consulting, one of our fundamental values is trust – we do what we say will do, every time. Without trust, we have no business, we have no way to contribute to our mission of improving research or scholarly communication. Consultancy and professional services are trust-based businesses, in our case clients are buying the expertise of our people, asking to be advised on issues and guided on their decision-making. It is fundamental that clients need to trust the people they are working with and trust the analysis and recommendations that are being put forward.
This relationship is perfectly captured in the Trust Equation, an explanatory formula which is widely used in professional services. In essence, the Trust Equation sets out that trustworthiness can be defined by the concepts of credibility, reliability and intimacy (the safety and security inherent in a relationship). These factors can all be affected by self-orientation (whether someone is more concerned about themselves or their own organisation rather than the greater good).
In considering the trustworthiness of the Research Consulting offer, we know we need to be credible, reliable and always actively engaged within our communities.
We know we must behave like this in all our work, we are in it for the long-haul, we need to continually build and reinforce relationships that are symbiotic, we need to look for opportunities where we can give rather than receive.
This value of trust links to our other core values – acting with integrity, striving for quality, and being connected with our communities, locally, nationally and internationally. When we hand over a final report to a client, they must have absolute trust in the process, the content and the direction we are encouraging them to go in. The more they trust us, the more likely it is that they will act on our recommendations. Ultimately, we can only be judged on this by our clients, what they say to us, what they might say to others and hopefully whether our trust-based relationship is continued and built upon in the future.
Research Consulting were proactive in their communication, kept to schedule and delivered on time. They presented a useful report which has formed the basis of changes we are implementing in the university. We are very happy with the outcome.
The progress update was frequent and effective. This allowed us to adapt our original plan to a new emerging situation. I haven’t used a consulting firm before, so I did not know what to expect. But, the outcome was far better than I imagined.
If you would like to find out more about how we build trust with our clients and how working with Research Consulting might be helpful to your organisation, please contact us.
