Learn more          
 

When did we start trusting machines?

Discover how trust works and why we need it

A Strategic Trust Framework
A Strategic Trust Framework

A Strategic Trust Framework

Learn how to build and maintain trust in a digital world

The Trust Factor
The Trust Factor

The Trust Factor

Discover the sweet filling that can sit between online businesses and their customers

/ 3 / 3

Trust is the currency of today and will be central to defining the winners of tomorrow.

The human-machine trust gap

Since AI’s effectiveness and reliability depend on access to vast amounts of real-world data, companies and users face a paradox: they must build and rely on machines they don’t fully trust to achieve better outcomes. Bridging the trust gap requires a solid understanding of the concept of trust. This is a crucial prerequisite for confidently embracing the transformative potential of technology.

 

 

Human-machine trust refers to the confidence individuals place in a machine’s intelligence, believing it is reliable, effective, and capable of helping them achieve their goals.

Why we need to care about human-machine trust

Advances in information and communications technology combined with exponential growth in data, have given rise to a more empowered consumer. Today, the majority of digital businesses rely on an ad-centric, data driven business model. However, they have missed and often intentionally neglected the opportunity to establish a trust-based relationship with their customers. Users are forced to blindly trust in fair and lawful conduct. The steady erosion of privacy results in pervasive concerns regarding the use of personal data.

Although today’s internet users are very much concerned about privacy and the integrity of their business partners, two third of consumers globally are willing to share additional personal data in exchange for additional services or discounts.

Digital leaders like Facebook and Uber are struggling to comply with upcoming requirements for transparency and accountability. In order to still be able to harness the evident value of data, companies must follow a new paradigm. They need to understand and manage trust.

The iceberg framework helps you to understand, enable and engender trust

In order to unlock the potential of
customer data, companies need to master
three capabilities: Companies need to build the necessary
foundations to successfully enable trust
cues. This involves primarily identifying
and effectively evaluating options in form
of use cases and testing these cases
rapidly in prototypes. Businesses need to get a good
understanding of how trust is built and of
existing and potential trust issues.
Organizations would be wise to first listen
and learn. The third capability includes implementing
a governance and operating structure that
allows managing and optimizing initiatives
and ultimately engendering trust. UNDERSTAND ENABLE ENGENDER

OUR STRATEGIC TRUST FRAMEWORK

iceberg.digital

Online trust and the iceberg metaphor

The digital economy and its data-driven business models are on a journey towards trust-based customer relationships. The most critical and fragile enabler for this transformation is online trust.

Trust is the result of a deliberate calculation process. Customers screen signals from online vendors and decide whether to take the risk to get vulnerable to the actions of another party or not. Generally, these trust cues are visible and actionable.

However, the formation of trust is also largely driven by cognitive structures that are not directly actionable. In our metaphor, these trust constructs lie below the waterline.

In a world where privacy is withering away like ice in summer, understanding and building online trust are essential business capabilities.

A framework that helps to understand online trust

The iceberg trust model draws on recent findings from socio- and neuroeconomic research. Researchers have come a long way in analyzing online trust. We combine these findings into a framework that not only allows understanding how online users actually trust but rather identifying where businesses can take influence.

Trust plays a central role in helping consumers overcome perceptions of risk and insecurity (McKnight, 2002)

Designing behavioral interventions

Research in behavioral economics indicates clearly that humans don’t always act rationally as implied by traditional economics. Digital transformation makes this fact even more transparent. Our brain is just not made to cope with the speed technologies are about to disrupt markets, politics and society. Our decision-making is prone to biases. And that’s ok. These imperfections are part of a very effective design – A design of the brain that eventually allowed humans to thrive in evolution.

Businesses can support the customer’s decision-making process by benevolently intervening. With knowledge of effective trust cues, such behavioural interventions can help customers making the “trust leap”.

 

We differentiate two types of interventions that can successfully shape the customer’s choice architecture; nudges and rational overrides.

Nudges

 

Nudges propose positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions as ways to influence the behavior and decision making of groups or individuals.

Rational overrides

 

A rational override is a small moment of intentional friction that attempts to influence people’s behaviour or decision-making by intervening automatic thinking and activating reflective conscious thinking.

The “balancing act” of competing business interests and privacy requirements will be of increasing importance in the near future. Marketing often takes advantage of the consumer’s bounded rationality and their well known cognitive biases. Such a rather opportunistic approach in digital markets is not sustainable.

 

Electronic markets have the potential to substantially reduce information asymmetry and transaction costs. They offer effective opportunities to gain insights into needs and behaviours of customers. Extracting these insight requires respectful and farsighted handling of personal data. The digital revolution with its explosive growth of data and system complexity is about to transform industries again. In order to harness the potential of data, the digital economy and its data driven business models must get on a journey towards trust-based customer relationships.

It all starts with a better understanding of digital trust.

Meet the team!

The iceberg.team is a netwotk of data professionals hand picked to effectively build data-driven products and services.

What it is all about…

  • Trust acts as a bridge from imperfect knowledge to confident action

    Lukyanenko et al. 2022 - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12525-022-00605-4

  • "Trust is inherently probabilistic, due to the involvement of risks which in themselves have uncertain outcomes."

    Volker Patent, 2016 - http://programme.exordo.com/fint2016/delegates/presentation/79/

  • Trust is an input condition in social systems by which supportive and collaborative activities can be encouraged in situations of uncertainty or risk.

    Luhmann, 1988

  • "Trusting behaviour involves relinquishing control over outcomes valuable to the self"

    Tanis, Postmes, 2005 - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.256/abstract

  • "Dubium sapientiae initium - Doubt is the origin of wisdom"

    René Descartes

  • "The trust factor opens or closes down the pace and nature of electronic commerce growth"

    Keen et al. 1999

  • "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world"

    The Buddha, quoted in the Dhammapada

  • "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

    Albert Einstein

  • "We're not productive any more. We don't make things any more. It's all automated. What are we for, then? We're consumers, Jim."

    Twelve Monkeys, 1995

View latest Contributions
WANT TO CONTRIBUTE?
Please feel free to get in touch with us to see if we can help.