The Four Factors of Trust

The essential, data-driven blueprint to build trust in your organization.

Ashley Reichheld with Amelia Dunlop

Did you know that trusted companies outperform their peers by up to 400%?

That customers who trust a brand are 88% more likely to buy again?

And that 79% of employees who trust their employer are more motivated to work (and less likely to leave)?

The importance of trust is at an all-time high—just as our inclination to trust is at an all-time low.

Building trust is your single greatest opportunity to create competitive advantage.

With new data at its core, The Four Factors of Trust gives you practical guidance to measure and build trust in the relationships that matter the most—with your customers, workforce, and partners.

Trust ultimately comes down to just Four Factors: Humanity, Capability, Reliability, and Transparency.

Using these Factors with Deloitte’s HX TrustID™—a groundbreaking measurement tool poised to become the gold standard for evaluating organizational performance—Ashley Reichheld and Amelia Dunlop show how organizations can measure, predict, and build trust to earn lifelong loyalty with their stakeholders. (Spoiler alert: You will also learn how to elevate the human experience of people inside and outside your organization.)

“There has been deep skepticism of traditional institutions which leads to the proliferation of misinformation and deepening polarization... With HX TrustID, Deloitte can help reverse that trajectory, instill trust, and build a stronger, healthier, society."

The Four Factors of Trust lays it all out so you can:

Create better business outcomes by understanding how trust affects human behaviors

Measure your organization’s trust score—revealing strengths, deficits, and opportunities to (re)build trust with key stakeholders

Build trust and earn loyalty through every function from marketing to operations to talent experience

Design actionable strategies to improve trust with your customers, workforce, and partners

Create the relationships you want to build.

Create the organizations you want to belong to.

Create the world you want to live in.

Full of compelling stories from leading organizations—Delta Airlines, Marriott International, Energizer, Cleveland Clinic, and many others—The Four Factors provides practical applications in Marketing & Experience, Cybersecurity, HR, Sustainability (ESG), and Operations & Technology. The Four Factors of Trust will enable you to create the relationships you want to build, the organizations you want to belong to, and the world you want to live in.

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About the Authors

Ashley Reichheld with Amelia Dunlop

Ashley Reichheld, a principal at Deloitte Digital, works with clients across industries to help them to reimagine their brands and experiences. Ashley believes that building trust is the single greatest opportunity to create competitive advantage. So she created HX TrustID™–a groundbreaking measurement tool poised to become the gold standard for evaluating organizational performance—to help companies measure, predict, and build trust with their customers, workforce, and partners. Ashley is the author of The Four Factors of Trust with bestselling author, Amelia Dunlop.

Amelia Dunlop, Chief Experience Officer at Deloitte Digital, helps organizations solve their toughest problems using human-equity-centered design to build empathy and trust. Amelia believes in elevating the experience for all humans, including customers, workers, and partners. She received Consulting Magazine’s 2020 Top Women in Technology Award for Excellence in Innovation. She is the author of The Wall Street Journal bestseller, Elevating the Human Experience: Three Paths to Love and Worth at Work (2021), and co-author of The Four Factors of Trust with Ashley Reichheld.

Praise for The Four Factors of Trust

“Great Place to Work has measured trust by surveying over 100 million working people over the last 30 years. Without trust there is no engagement, satisfaction, loyalty, or happiness. In this book Ashley and Amelia have built a trust bridge between the employee and customer experience that will create a durable outsized competitive advantage that benefits organizations and humanity.”

Michael C. Bush

CEO, Great Place to Work

“The Four Factors has cracked the code on trust. This dynamic team articulates the critical role cyber plays in both securing and recovering trust, bringing to life the challenges faced by cyber alongside pragmatic suggestions to ensure a measurable, predictable and actionable approach to building trust.”

Dave DeWalt

Founder and Managing Director, NightDragon

“Trust is one of the most critical—and essential—issues facing organizations today. With trust, anything is possible. Without it, everything is difficult. The Four Factors of Trust reveals a new, research-based framework and measurement tool for earning trust from customers, employees, investors, and other stakeholders. Reading these groundbreaking insights, and showing respect, patience and commitment will be invaluable for CEOs and frontline supervisors throughout any organization.”

Henrietta Fore

Chairman of the Board and CEO, Holsman International

“We all know the importance of trust, but few of us really understand how to earn it. Thankfully, Ashley Reichheld and Amelia Dunlop are here to help. In this remarkably readable, well-researched, and actionable book, they reveal what it takes for individuals and organizations to establish reliability, transparency, capability, and humanity.”

Adam Grant

#1 New York Times bestselling author and host of the TED podcast, WorkLife

“What drives trust, and how do the most trusted organizations earn it from customers and employees? The answer is more complicated that you imagine. Deloitte's Ashley Reichheld and Amelia Dunlop unravel the mystery, and make building trust simpler, in this vital and pragmatic book.”

Daniel H. Pink

Author of New York Times bestsellers The Power of Regret and Drive

“Reichheld and Dunlop have crafted a compelling data-driven narrative that delves deep into the intricacies of trust. Packed with rich case studies, this book breaks down the complexities of what it means to build trust as an organization with wisdom and humor. Don’t miss it.”

Sandra Sucher

Harvard Business School professor and author, The Power of Trust

“It’s no secret that trust is on the decline around the world. Yet trust remains more important, even vital, than ever before. It is, in fact, the one thing that changes everything—a force-multiplier for inspired performance and greater well-being in everyone around you. Whether you’re in the C-Suite or on the factory floor, you can lead in creating and extending trust to others. Ashley and Amelia’s terrific book will show you how.”

Stephen M. R. Covey

New York Times bestselling author of The Speed of Trust and Trust & Inspire

“Trust is easy to destroy – and too many of us believe that it’s hard to create. But in fact, a deeper understanding of trust shows this to be wrong. The Four Factors of Trust provides data-rich, actionable solutions. If you want to build a fearless organization with long-lasting trust and loyalty—for consumers and employees alike—this book will show you how.”

Amy C. Edmondson

Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School, and author of The Fearless Organization

“I often say that strong trust is forged from positive, consistent experiences first imagined through high expectations. With the stellar team, deep data, and helpful anecdotes that have shaped this book, I certainly expected to experience a helpful toolkit for evolving trust and I was not disappointed. I trust that any reader equally keen to elevate and evolve their brand will be delighted.”

Suzanne Frey

VP of Product and Chief Privacy Officer, Google

“Today’s winning companies put people and purpose first. Creating trust within a company is a critical component to being successful in that endeavor. In The Four Factors of Trust, Reichheld and Dunlop share with clarity and brilliance the best practices for gaining trust, and even share the methodology you can use to calculate your organization’s “trust score.” This powerful book is an essential tool for everyone working on transforming an organization.”

Hubert Joly

Senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, former Chairman and CEO of Best Buy, and author The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the next Era of Capitalism

“Read this important new book so you can help your organization measure and manage trust—one of the most vital ingredients for building relationships that are worthy of loyalty.”

Fred Reichheld

Creator of the Net Promoter® Score and System and author, Winning On Purpose: The Unbeatable Strategy of Loving Customers

“Nothing is more important to business success than building trusted relationships with all your stakeholders. Every organization can benefit from reading The Four Factors, a thoroughly researched, comprehensive guide for creating a deeply-rooted culture of trust.”

Amy Weaver

President and Chief Financial Officer, Salesforce