If the car I purchased advertises the availability of many features on the car’s associated smartphone app, I expect that those features will work. When I buy a new product, the implicit promise is that the product will work as advertised. It builds trust when promises are consistently made and kept. When you personally promise to take care of something, the person you promised expects you to follow through.
When you or one of your team, as representatives of your company, promise something, then the person you promised expects the company to follow through.
#Ceo brings back website promises service full#
Product marketing materials and websites are full of promises about what to expect from a product, a company, a conference, an investor. Promises happen at both the individual and organizational levels. “Someone will be with you in 5 minutes.” “We will refund your money.” “This product will help improve your company’s efficiency.” “We will send you the data as soon as it is available.” “I will take care of you.” Promises may be big or little – and businesses make many of them. And, as the hours extended, he was beginning to wonder if he should trust her business to pick him up when promised if she could not follow through with a phone call. From his perspective, the call was time-sensitive as he was trying to get his trip planned. When she had not called him back by the end of the next day, he was frustrated. She answered his call but told him she would call him back once she was out of the grocery store. Lest you think my description is overly dramatic, my father recently shared a story about a senior shuttle business owner he called about getting a ride to the airport. If you do not call as promised, you can create frustration, disappointment, and a loss of trust. If you call them back within those expectations, that is a promise kept. If you say, “I will call you back today,” you set an even more precise expectation. When you say to someone, “I will call you back,” you are setting their expectation to expect your call. To think about keeping promises in a business context, let’s start by reflecting on what a promise is: a statement of intent, a pledge to do something, a basis for an expectation.
And it may be that you will never fully recover once the seed of doubt is planted. When we, as individuals and as organizations, promise one thing and do something else, we erode the precious benefit of the doubt that those who count on us bestowed on us as an initial gift. The damage done by breaking promises is tremendous. This is one of the most potent principles to apply in successful startup building as well as successful life building. Keeping promises is an expression of integrity and builds trust.
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