The role of trust in clients’ buying decisions
Although it’s been more than 20 years since David Maister et al published The Trusted Adviser, the fact the book is still widely read in professional services today shows just how important trust continues to be in the sector. But will that always be the case?
Let’s take legal services as an example. Despite the growing importance of technology in delivery, the impact of the Big Four firms’ entry, and the arrival of other alternative providers, 59% of clients say that trust is still one of the two the most important factors driving their choice of firm to work with across the entire buying process (see figure 1). That’s twice as high as the next most important factor, technical expertise (cited by 32% of clients). These two attributes are, of course, interrelated: As Maister pointed out, technical expertise builds trust.
In a world in which organisations are trying to move towards more evidence-based decision-making, the continuing importance of feels like an anachronism. But it’s the inevitable consequence of information asymmetry in the professional services sector. Clients need lawyers’ expertise because they don’t have it themselves, but if they don’t have that expertise themselves, how can they judge whether a lawyer does? What they do is rely on experience, their own and others’ (a recommendation from their personal network is the second most important factor when they reach the point of deciding which legal firms to invite to bid for a given piece of work). Lawyers will always know more about the matter in hand—otherwise, why hire them? Clients, lacking an equivalent level of information have to make decisions based on trust, and trust comes from experience. Trust, you could argue, is important, not because it’s inherently good, but because it’s a substitute for evidence.