Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2014. Details such as Mendoza being 63 and combining his NetApp role with speaking on corporate culture, NetApp’s 2009 number-one ranking on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For, and its donations to the St. Baldrick’s Foundation are as of 2014.
If customers trust you, they will be candid with you. The two go hand in hand. Trust, loyalty and candour are the three pillars on which any company that wants to have a future must stand. That is how clearly Tom Mendoza sees it. He is a business executive and vice chairman of NetApp, a company that, under his leadership and business principles, reached number one in Fortune magazine’s ranking of the 100 best companies to work for.
Mendoza has a saying: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” That is the first fundamental pillar for earning trust: you have to show that you genuinely care about your customers (and about your employees too).
Although in business customers can weigh up other options before staying loyal to a company, they will always appreciate a place where everyone can be candid with one another.
We need it for our sensitive business
Mendoza’s company is in the data business. “We hold the vital data of our customers and their organisations. Customers need to know that their most sensitive data is safe, and that if something goes wrong, we will be there for them.”
As a company, you need the customer to tell you: “We trust you.”
Loyalty
Once you have built the trust you need, loyalty comes next.
“When I think of loyalty, I think of a team that will be there through thick and thin. They are loyal to you and to your company because they believe in you and in the rest of the team that works there.”
And loyalty is a two-way street. They are loyal because you build trust and you are loyal.
Culture
While everyone talks about values, Mendoza prefers to talk about culture instead.
“I often see values posted on the walls of bad companies, and they are exactly the same values as those of great, important companies.”
The main difference between good and bad companies is that the bad ones don’t live by their values.
And that destroys trust within an organisation. The moment you put a value on a wall but don’t live it, you have lost trust. And losing trust drags loyalty down with it.
Company culture is behaviour. Any business can have a great culture when things are going well, but when hard times come, that is when you find out whether the company is willing to live by its values.
Mendoza recalls that in 2009 he received an email from Guy Chiarello, an executive at JPMorgan Chase, which said: “Thank you. You have never let us down. You have always been there when we needed you.”
A top-tier customer like JPMorgan thanking you in those words is the best compliment you can receive as an executive.
Candour
This is why candour is so important in building trust. Honesty has a big impact on the company and on people’s opinions. Everyone is tired of being lied to.
Trust and candour attract talent, strengthen partnerships and keep customers.
Finally, by building a company that becomes a great place to work for, it also becomes a place where it is a pleasure to work with the people in it. And the same goes for customers. When you show them your culture and your loyalty, and you are candid, customers enjoy working with your company, and you, as a business owner, enjoy working with grateful customers.
*Thomas F. Mendoza is currently 63. He combines his role as vice chairman with frequent speaking on corporate culture and leadership, and is a regular guest speaker at Stanford University. NetApp has donated more than $1 million to the St. Baldrick’s Foundation for childhood cancer research.
This article is inspired by a piece by Tom Mendoza himself, originally published in Forbes, adapted and modified.
Further reading
Featured image: Coolcaesar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
