Arit Effanga is a results-driven corporate communications executive and media strategist with over two decades of experience spanning broadcasting, public relations, and reputation management. After an extensive career in radio, television, and digital media, she transitioned into strategic communications and currently serves as the Head of Corporate Communications within the aviation sector. Recognized for her expertise in crisis communication, storytelling, and public positioning, Arit specializes in leveraging media influence to strengthen corporate brands and shape positive public perception.
There is something many businesses quietly assume: because we have been around for years, customers should trust us. Not quite.
Your customers do not owe you their trust because you have a big office, a familiar logo, or a blue-chip client list. Trust is not part of the package. It is earned and, unfortunately for many organisations, it has to be earned again and again.
Think about your own life as a customer. You order something online, and it arrives late. You call customer service and spend 40 minutes listening to music that you did not ask to hear. Someone finally answers, reads from a script, and says, “We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.” You are not convinced because the company apologised, but the experience did not change. This is where communication gets interesting.
Organisations often believe communication is about getting the right words approved, published, and distributed, but it isn’t. Communication is about what happens after the words leave the organisation. Did the customer understand? Did they believe you? Did they feel heard? Did anything actually change? Those questions matter more than any press statement.
We have become remarkably good at corporate apologies. Something goes wrong, and within hours, a statement appears. It begins with something along the lines of: “We are aware of the incident…” then comes: “We take this matter very seriously…” then: “We sincerely regret any inconvenience caused…” and finally: “We remain committed to delivering the highest standards…”
At this point, customers are practically able to write the statement themselves. The problem is not that these phrases are always wrong. The problem is that they can become a substitute for accountability.
A customer who has lost money does not necessarily need your commitment to excellence. They need to know what happened, what you are doing about it, what they should expect next, and, sometimes, who is going to fix the problem. That is communication.
Trust is built in the small moments and rarely created by one spectacular campaign.
It is the airline that tells passengers there is a delay before they have to start asking questions. It is the bank that explains a charge instead of hiding behind complicated terms and conditions. It is the retailer who admits an item is out of stock instead of pretending it is “currently being processed”. It is the organisation that tells employees what is happening instead of allowing WhatsApp to become the unofficial notice board. It is the CEO who says, “We got this wrong,” without requiring committees or legal reviews before the sentence can leave the building.
These moments may seem small, but they are not. They tell people whether your organisation can be trusted when things are going well and, more importantly, when they are not.
Here is another uncomfortable truth, customers do not wake up thinking about your brand as much as you do. Your communications team may have spent weeks discussing the perfect campaign headline, but your customer may simply want the product to work. Your brand team may be excited about the new positioning while your customer may be asking, “Where is my order?” Your organisation may have invested heavily in telling the world that it is customer-centric, but the customer would rather experience it than read about it. This is why communication can not be separated from operations.
If the service is poor, communication cannot permanently disguise it. If employees are unhappy, an internal newsletter filled with motivational quotes will not magically change the culture. If customers are repeatedly ignored, another campaign about “putting people first” may actually make matters worse. People notice the gap between what organisations say and what they do. And that gap is where trust goes to die.
Now comes the age of the screenshot. There was a time when a dissatisfied customer had to write a letter, make a phone call, or find a journalist. Those days are largely gone.
Today, a customer can post one screenshot before your communications team has finished saying, “Let’s monitor the situation.” That screenshot can travel across cities, countries, and continents, and it can become a conversation, then a headline, and then sadly, a reputational issue.
This is not an argument for panicking every time someone complains online. It is an argument for understanding that customers now have a public voice, and they are not required to use your preferred communication channel.
The smartest organisations are learning to listen before they respond because sometimes the most damaging thing you can do in a crisis is rush to prove that you are right.
So, what should organisations do?
Start with something surprisingly simple: Listen. Not just to surveys, quarterly reports, or carefully selected customer testimonials presented at management meetings. Listen to the complaints, to frontline employees, to social media, to what customers say when they think nobody from the company is listening.
Then, communicate like a human being. Explain what happened, and take responsibility where responsibility belongs. Don’t promise what you can not deliver, hide behind jargon, or make your customer work hard to understand your response. And when you make a mistake, don’t spend so much time protecting the organisation’s image that you forget the person standing on the other side of the problem.
Trust is not a KPI you can manufacture. You can measure customer satisfaction, engagement, and sentiment, but trust is different. People decide whether they trust you based on experience.
That is why customers do not owe your organisation their trust. They give it to you and they can take it away.
So, before the next strategy meeting begins with “How do we manage the narrative?”, perhaps ask a better question: “What are we doing that gives people a reason to believe us?” Now, that is a conversation worth having.
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