Extreme Trust: Honesty as a Competitive Advantage

Review by James M. Kerr

Don Peppers and Martha Rogers are the modern day Masters and Johnson of customer intimacy and service delivery. They have cranked out enormous amounts of material on the subject and have delivered some terrific books that have served to re-shape our thinking on how best to exceed customer expectations in order to keep them coming back for more. Extreme Trust is no exception.

In their latest book, Peppers and Rogers argue that businesses must deliberately act to protect the interests of customers proactively, before they have a chance to spread negative buzz - the result will be a firm that generates extreme trust.

The authors show how this trend is already playing out in banks, retailers, credit card and cell phone companies.

Peppers and Rogers describe organizations that learn from each customer interaction, and leverage these insights to create better and better customer experiences. These "trustable" enterprises (as they call them) focus on winning the long-term battle for trust and loyalty – a facet that can be best quantified through repeat business.

Extreme Trust is another important contribution to the betterment of management thinking from the team of Peppers and Rogers. I highly recommend it. Pick it up and read it as soon as you can!